kLIFF nOTES OF SOME GREAT BOOKS

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Good to Great Truman- you can accomplish anything in life, provided you do not mind who gets the results.

--It is important to focus on what to do and what NOT to do!

--Under the right conditions, the problems of commitment, alignment, motivation, and change largely melt away.
-- Greatness is a conscious choice (11)
Steps—(13)

The right people are your most important asset. Great vision without the right people is irrelevant. Ask the who questions before the what! (48)—the right people will do the right things and deliver the best results they are capable of, regardless of incentive (50). Remove the burden of people who are not achieving (53)
Confront the brutal facts—with cautious skepticism and use The Stockdale Paradox—maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end; regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time, confront the brutal facts.
1. Ask questions to gain understanding not manipulation or blame or demeaning.
The hedgehog concept—transcends the curse of competence. Piercing insight that see’s through complexity and discerns patterns. See what is essential and ignore the rest –genius in the simplicity) (91) implement with fanatical consistency—booster shots, inspect what you expect!
1. Let me abilities determine my attempts (97).
2. If we cannot be the best, why are we trying?
3. It requires a severe standard of excellence.
4. This is the turning point in an organizations journey! (112)
5. It requires repletion, iterations.
6. 3 questions—what can we be the best at, do we understand what drives us, and what best ignites our passion?
7. If it doesn’t fit our concept-we won’t do it!
A culture of discipline—not tyranny
1. With disciplined people, we don’t need hierarchy, bureaucracy, or excessive controls.
2. Is there a ‘stop doing’ list?
3. It’s freedom and responsibility of a highly developed system (125).

i. Start with disciplined people
ii. Disciplined thought

Disciplined action through understanding the 3 circles ® what can we be the best at, do we understand what drives us (our resource engine), and what best ignites our passion?

Technology accelerators—ch 7—how do we think and respond differently to technology? Technology is not the creator of momentum; it is the accelerator (153). ® breakthrough momentum (161) (inertia with velocity)j
Overcome inertia—Flywheel concept. Overcome complacency and mediocrity—Good enough never is—(Debbie Fields) with constancy/consistency of purpose
1. Under-promise and over-deliver (174).
2. Under the right conditions, problems of alignment, motivation, and change melt away.
3. Create tangible evidence that what we do makes sense (176) - a wining team wants to be part of the results.
Legacy—taking care of the students (customer) ® profits from core values. Are we a both/and culture. Does the clock tick when I ma not here? Will it continue to after I am gone?

Questions to start the year---
n How do you continually stay qualified for your job? Are you consciously willing to do what needs to be done?
n What will BHS look like after I leave? Will there be enduring values and greater success?
n What results am I looking for (30)?
n What level is your resolve at, uncompromising, stoic, unrelenting, unwavering…?
n What are we already doing that we can be better at ® best at? (205). What work makes you feel compelled to create greatness?
n How do we know we are successful? How do we measure our performance relative to our mission?

Goals—(56)—
1. Act on the people who need to change seats, dispositions, methods, or get off the bus. It should not be a matter of convenience for me! Ask would I hire this person again or would I be upset if he or she were to leave?
a. are our student’s seeing the relevancy of what we are teaching?
b. What are my doing and stop doing lists? What things fit the 3 circles?

2. Identify my biggest opportunities and put me best people there (59). What can we be the best at? Do we understand what we can do better than anyone else can (98)? (109) Find what people’s passions are and ignite them! Develop a departmental council. (115) ® BHAG (203).

3. Learn to debate for the best, common good, funneled thru the lens of success (what’s best) for students.
4. How am I continually staying qualified—Prof Growth and maturity...?
5. How do we know we are successful? How do we measure our performance relative to our mission?
a. rigorously assemble evidence.
b. develop indicators that are consistent and relevant and intelligently arrived at. (*8)
c. realize that our growth is relevant to where we come from and to where we are going.
d. once we think of ourselves as great the slippery slope of mediocrity appears underfoot!
6. Where does my power derive from—? (*10) True leadership is derived when people follow with the choice they don’t have to!
a. prayer
b inclusion
c. language
d. shared interest
e. coalition
7. Lack of resources only means to be more selective.

STRATEGIC PLAN (Holy Ambition)

people seem more concerned about the right to choose than choosing what is right (76)
radical faith means YOU ARE WILLING TO ACT DEPSITE FEARS (81)
- remember what faith is and what it is not -85
- remember how deeply God values our Faith-86
- remember what Jesus taught his followers about radical behavior-88
  - who is Christ
  - have a big God
  - don’t minimize danger
  - there is a cost
  - it is caught more than taught
- remember those who have gone before us—97
Carpe diem vs. Carpe Vita—seize the day vs. seize the LIFE!—104—My purpose is to give you life in all its fullness John 10:10b
Vision is looking beyond the problem and dreaming/imagining what would solve or replace the problem if God, you and others moved into action (3rd alternative/out of the box/ bhag—bhad (dream-111)—105
- It’s getting the big picture of a God-given burden viewed under grace
Strategic Plan—a specific outline or game plan—108and step out in faith if all the details are incomplete.
- Where God’s agenda is championed, the resources are channeled/follow.
- The plan is specific and well researched
- God doesn’t channel resources to vague ideas!
- It is birthed in private and researched privately too-listen carefully to God’s guidance and those around you—119-look for similar hearts, time resources, leadership, energy, synergy, plus minus columns, who can be trusted?
  - Gather a team to help with the plan-think of the end-in-mind
  - Be secretive
  - Seek solitude
- Launch the plan publicly—127
  - Clearly define the problem
  - Identify with the problem
  - Propose a ‘we’ solution
    - Other’s need to own the problem and the solution.
  - Give a clear, strong challenge
  - Motivate to the deepest level
  - Help other’s to see God’s hand in the vision and success
  - Explain specifically how others can be involved in the project
- Personal commitment
  - Bring awesome power-137
  - It inspires
  - Protects from other influences
- Life lessons--140
  - I pledge by the grace of God to do this
  - It’s a dedication to a course of action, relationship, project, or cost.
  - They are sustained by mutual accountability to others—144
  - There is a sense of order—146
- How to sustain commitments
  - Cooperation-we never get beyond how well we really get along –148
    - We will never be any better that when we work as a team
    - Value recognition in promoting cooperation
  - The common vision is greater than individual differences-recognize uniqueness and let people know you need their commitment—a unique job for each one—where do they fit?
  - The are fostered when there is a feeling of belonging.(meetings after school)
  - !-relationship building is pivotal to people’s personal commitments!—classroom management
  - The combined effort of the group is greater than the sum of the parts—151
  - 156-the value of the project to the worker will determine the value of the worker to the project
    - we cannot ask others to go where we will not
    - As leaders--we are stewards of certain gifts, abilities, and opportunities—157
    - Commitment flows from vested interest—assignments are important
    - Share how the vision is good for all—personal conversations about fit with a commitment
- Follow the principles of cooperation/coordination/motivation—159
- We have to move out of comfort zones-160
- Things move fast if the foundation is well structured.
A Courageous Soul—163
- reality checks there is a specific measurement of distance between our expectations and experiences
  - if small = a minor adjustment
  - of large= anger and possible disillusionment
- life usually gets harder before it gets better-166—there will be resistance
- we must anticipate opposition amidst our expectations—168

Opposition-ridicule, criticism, discouragement	Remedy—170
discouragement-frontal attack-169-criticism, ridicule and fear/discouragement, a little voice dripping with sarcasm	Fly the public flag—start with prayer—turn the offense of opponents over to God for action-175 --remember salt preserves righteousness and light exposes evil.
division-unexpected ambush—selfishness and greed	--the enemy goes from anger to more anger… --respond practically
destruction-deception and intimidation
4 causes of discouragement - loss of energy/strength-180, fatigue, sometimes it’s a matter of doing a little too much of what is right! - loss of vision/perspective—183-count your blessings-assess what has already been done… -loss of confidence-183—unbelief/uncertainty -loss of security-184—fear-vulnerability	Fight back— Show how to re-center thoughts and actions— Difficulty brings determination—use positive and practical actions that touch the personal—family, homes, security…name the fear and give the antidote…186— --be proactive-be practical and positive-188 --keep track of your gray zones—189—when you are tired, lacking perspective, and thinking (if small that’s part of life, if large®discouragement). --remember who is on your team—190-direct attention to the Lord first—count your blessings --fight-fight-fight!!!—193— --never fight alone-194-

Accepting a challenge—Gen24

Accept the challenge-- v3,9
Examine alternatives --v5
Promise to follow instructions-- v9
Make a plan --v12-14
Submit the plan to God-- v12-14
Pray for guidance-- v12-14
Devise a strategy with room for god to operate --v12-14
Wait --v21
Watch closely--v21
Accept the answer thankfully-v26
Explain the situation to concerned parties –v34-39
Refuse unnecessary delay-v56
Follow thru with the entire plan-- v66

Because we live in a day of hearsay, when few people pass along information that is precise and reliable. Do you?

Are you careful about what you say?
Do you have the facts?
Do you offer proof that the information you are conveying is correct?
While there are occasions when it's appropriate to pass along needed and serious information to the right sources, there's a growing preoccupation with rumor and slander. Half truths and innuendos become juicy morsels in the mouths of unreliable gossips. There is no way to measure the number of people who have been hurt by rumor, exaggeration, and hearsay. Perhaps you have suffered this yourself.
Be careful what you say. Be careful how you say it. Be careful that you send the right message, that you send it to the right person, and that you do so with the right motive.

Taken from Charles R. Swindoll, Great Days with the Great Lives (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2005). Copyright © 2005 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission.

Getting to Got it

What are cognitive structures/ mental structures/ mental tools/ patterns of thought? (Psychological systems for gathering, organizing, and processing info –xii). There are 3 categories

o Comparative thinking-requires reflective awareness of the sensory input and mental representations (visualizations) of the info for processing. How are the bits similar and different (2) - includes recognition, memorization, conservations of consistency (making senses) classification, spatial orientation, temporal orientation, metaphorical thinking.
o Symbolic representations—transform info into culturally (BVA) acceptable coding systems (most of the time)® verbal and nonverbal language, math, music and rhythm, dance, movements, interpersonal interactions, graphic organizers, sculpture, drama, multimedia…
o Logical reasoning—use of the abstract strategies to systematically process and generate info® inductive and deductive reasoning, analogical and hypothetical thinking, cause-effect relationships, analysis, reflection synthesis, evaluation, problem framing, and problem solving.

This leads to a spiritual dimension (xvi) to learning—Gardner’s abandoned Existential MI—The Omegadigm--the intangibles BVA qualities that influence the entering position (gateway) of learners in the process of acquisition. It involves the heart and soul and spirit of the learner and the relationship of the teacher to the students and the ability to mediate the relationship to the content of the lesson.
Learning is created by the learner for its sense seeking organ—the brain, generating its own energy that is cyclically reinforced by ongoing creativity thereby change in neuronal networks. UNLESS THE LEARNER INTERACTS CREATIVELY WITH THE INFORMNATION TO CONSTRUCT MEANING, THERE IS LITTLE OR NO CHANGE. WE ARE ALL LEARNERS! The more engaged we are in creating meaning, the more change and the more learning!

o The learner develops his or her own cognitive structures—not you, but we can mediate the process with the stimuli to reflective awareness and visualization.
o It is never to late—they have to become aware of their mental tools

The perfect speed is being there, so how does the teacher; get them there to mediate the relationship beyond self to the material/content? How do we assist them ‘figuring out, how to figure it out’ (xv) or ‘crack the code’ or ‘know what they don’t know’® become questioners and partakes of their own cognition!

o Make connections to prior knowledge by building bridges from the known to the unknown—start where they are!
o Find patterns and relationships—compare, analyze, and organize info into patterns and relationships (5). ‘Sensitized frustration’ is part of the process in order to change.
o Formulate rules—that make processing automatic, fast, and predictable. There is a difference between knowing the rule and when to use it (9)!
o Creating abstractions allows the learner to extend beyond the original learning and transfer to other situ’s from fundamental guides. The teacher does this by mediating the meaning thru questions along the taxonomy.

How do they build structures (14, Garner)

o Reflective Awareness—conscious perceptions thru thoughtful consideration—to mentally take hold/grasp something as we assign meaning thru our perceptions. Assigning worth to the stimulus onslaught thru our BVA filters/lenses.
§ Once a student downshifts that’s it—learning effectively shuts down.
§ The same is passive recipients—hoe have we taught kids to learn!
o Visualization—the ability to mentally run the video or picture and manipulate the info for later retrieval (17)

The brain is a sense seeking organ

o ask how does it relate to what is already there
§ make CONNECTIONS-patterns-rules-codes-abstract principles-concepts
o As instructors what are our default mechanisms?
§ When a student asks for process (I don’t get it) because they haven’t developed the code yet!
§ We fall back to content (if you would just do your homework…)

As a sense seeking organ we make sense of our surroundings and attach rightness thru our lenses developed from our senses and experiences.

o It involves BVA—beliefs values and attitudes and what we accept as fact, dogma, etc.
o It adds an emotional flavor to each level

We are aware when we are alert
We are conscious of our surroundings by mindful attentiveness
We are reflective when we thoughtfully consider something thru the senses

o VAK-smell or taste

Time--® stimuli

o Sensory data

Students entering our facility have been encouraged/taught to be passive recipients of knowledge
Entering their cognitive structures that get developed thru reflective practice/awareness and the ability to visualize ® mental ability to learn, create, D. (17, Garner)

o Reflective –encourage to see relationships and predictability ® abstract & generalize ® construct/develop meaning for themselves
o Frustration is part of the process but with a lifeline and dynamic tension of just enough.
o Knowing the rules ≠ knowing when/how to use them
o Action steps –
§ Let students do the puzzle of success (brainteasers, mental puzzles, etc.
· Hanoi tower, riddles, Sunday comics
§ How do we know ourselves
· Learning style inventory
· Their own MI
· Blooms- where do they go?
§ Teacher tools
· Ask q’s for students to figure things out and become self-aware.
o What stayed the same, what changes-relationships to equations
o Compare and contrast®classify
o Describe and comment-every time we write we reflect!
o Cause and effect®patterns
o Metaphors—abstract relations-creative comparisons.
o What rules seem to exist
o What transfers to other situ’s
o What q’s are the student’s asking—that’s an assessment
· Build the relationship
o To the student-spirit and soul
o To the material (23 Garner)
§ Content, activities, assessments ® cognitive structures®
§ To previous experience and knowledge—how do they relate to it (with all their senses patterns, colors, smells,) ®make the connections in their minds?
§ How does the teacher mediate the relationship to the material?
§ Use the other senses®smell
o To other students®teach someone else-help someone else understand.

What is memorization (36-7)? It is the cognitive structure for storing and retrieving info. It is NOT a mental file cabinet of stored facts and knowledge to pulled at will (or not in the case off senior moments or brain freezesJ) as a cognitive structure, it activates different parts of the mind to reconstruct info—much as food is digested and broken down into usable components for metabolism.
What is the difference between understanding and memorization? What is the conscious act of processing?

o The cog structure for memory has 3 parts
§ Short-term memory—temporary remembering of info available to the senses
§ Continuous memory—makes connections with prior knowledge
§ Long-term memory—makes info accessible depending on the effectiveness of processing.
§ Their function is not linear but cyclical and interactive.
§ Memorized info is either
· Procedural—how things are done
· Declarative—recording data and events with attached meaning- emotions dictate attention or novelty too!
§ Factors that effect memorization—emotion, purpose, BVA, kind and quality of info, prior knowledge and experience.
§ Understanding of the content is necessary for effective memorization—

Education begins with a relationship between people and continues on the bridge to content
How important is conservation of constancy?

Kids arrive every day, failed past semester and we ask are they disabled/unmotivated/absent/unfocused/inattentive/lazy or just slow?
We use research-based strategies/interventions of Best Practice to help them learn.
Interventions

o Guided study
o Reading-literacy
o Math help centre
o Summer school
o 1.5 math and science
o SPED
o Resource services
o Homework detentions
o ACT prep
o Saturday school
o 1 on 1

Where are you in the mix?

o gather process output info

Time effort and NRG!

What can we ask ourselves amidst all this?

What is the problem we are trying to solve or the obstacle we are trying to overcome, and what does it have to do with improving teaching and learning?
What are our strategies for solving this problem, and how and why do we think implementing these strategies will cause the needed change—what’s our “theory of action”?
Who (teachers, parents, students, community) needs to understand what, in order to “own the problem” and support the strategies we’re implementing?
Who is accountable for what for implementation of this strategy to be successful, and what do they need to be effective?
What evidence (observable changes in short-term outcomes or behaviors) will we track that will tell us whether our strategies are working?

--For teachers (and kids too) the ‘tipping point’ in information overload has been reached, and a students aversion to reading does not signal a deficit disorder at all! It is a survival tactic for negotiating the forest of our information- obsessed culture of words. We (students and teachers) favor success in beating the best path through this jumble, so we can effortlessly deal with the enormity of e-mail, word documents, iPod downloads, wiki spaces, as an effort to separate the wheat from the chaff instead of absorbing surplus/gluts of information!

The information age has driven us to a precipice (or dilemma on a lesser level) that the pursuit of knowledge is less a process of acquisition than one of hurling irrelevant material out the window. Are we afraid of the virtual ‘Info Gestapo’ cornering us under the searchlight of …why don’t you know rather than ‘if it’s really important it will show up again’…

What do we need to know under this smothering full-court press or 86-defense of information overload that forces a few relevant questions that are keys to understanding for students and teachers alike!

Why do we need to know it?
And given the fact that by the end of our lives we will only have absorbed or converted to long term memory--knowledge a sliver of the information available to us in the new database/blog/wiki/blackbberry/iPod-web-page world ®expanding at 1.5 million pages a day should we bother knowing it?

If literacy is key, we are no longer reading, we’re searching for meaning amidst the info jungble (spelling intentional) and trying to survive.
BUT—we are in the business of teaching (for survival or how to learn) SO
Any Day can we ask the questions for student progress and answer back to them

4 –I did more than I thought I would do.
3 –I accomplished my goal
2—I didn’t accomplish everything I wanted to, but I learned quite a bit
1—I tried but didn’t really learn much.
0—I didn’t really try to accomplish my goal

4—I taught you at a level for you to achieve
3—we accomplished our weekly goals
2—there was a lot of learning this week
1—you really didn’t show much this week
0—I didn’t see much effort this week because you weren’t actively engaged in the processing of information

So what are the best strategies to make relationships with information so we can best present information for learning?

Stories still work that includes drama and visual techniques…
Chunk critical-input experiences for the working memory to process the information. Then allow the student to relate and reflect—

o No single strategy works in all cases so, some include;
§ Reciprocal teaching
§ Summarizing and note-taking
§ Nonlinguistic representations—pictures, mnemonics,
§ Questions
§ Reflection-what preconceptions were accurate, which weren’t?
§ Cooperative learning
o The key is the student must understand info before a memory strategy can be employed (37, Marzano).
o What is a critical-input experience—the key experiences (2-3 per learning goal) determined necessary for learning and understanding.
§ The learner needs to be present mentally and prepared for reflection, elaboration and setting up NTQ’s

Students with ADD or ADHD behaviors- (could it be due to diets of refined sugars?) use a blurred sweeping perception that limits sensory input. This type of superficial info gathering is reinforced by the societal impact of fast-paced encounters of speed; commercials, restaurants, video games, etc. constant noise and commotion overload senses without processing. Students, especially, are hurried from one activity to another with miniscule time for reflection thereby attaching relevance to information (17, Garner, 2007).

How does visualization matter?—with reflective awareness of the incoming messages and moving to LTM (long term memory) visualization mentally represents (codes) and manipulates info, ideas, feelings, and sensory experiences that can lead to abstractions ®memory storage. The mental representations can become so real that the mind has trouble differentiating outside world from inside.

What is our current reality?
Information that we have to attend to is expanding at 1.5 million pages a day should we bother knowing it? And given the fact that by the end of our lives we will only have absorbed or converted to long term memory--knowledge a sliver of the information available to us in the new database/blog/wiki/blackbberry/iPod-web-page world ® What do we need to know under this smothering full-court press or 86-defense of information overload that forces a few relevant questions that are keys to understanding for students and teachers alike!

We have to choose what matters – recent action research inn our own district indicates that kids in 1.5 classes do care about grades….so?

The brain is a sense seeking organ
As a sense seeking organ we make sense of our surroundings and attach rightness thru our lenses developed from our senses and experiences.
make CONNECTIONS-patterns-rules-codes-abstract principles-concepts
Students entering our facility have been encouraged/taught to be passive recipients of knowledge
So what are the best strategies to make relationships with information so we can best present information for learning?

We use research-based strategies/interventions of Best Practice to help them learn.

o Chunk info in a 50 minute period with an anchor activity to engage the mind
o The brain works best within its attention spans of 20-30 min intervals taking into consideration primacy and recency effects.

Neural Connections
Teaching important material thru multiple learning pathways® cross-curricular topics

Without context or relationship to the material, facts get stored in remoter areas of the brain.
New info is held I working memory 20 minutes. The challenge becomes how to get it into LTM.

This can be done by associating it with other memory® hooks (stored lops). Store by similarity, pull out by difference. Cells that fire together wire together (7). Iterations necessary and multimodal are better. Repeated action increases dendritic sprouts to connect new memories to old, and the brain increases in efficiency. For vocabulary, research ahs indicated that words are more likely to be remembered when students concentrate on the meaning rather than the word’s appearance.

How can students personalize info. Marzano® draw a sketch of their visualizations and verbally communicate their pictures to partners. Write in their own words. In effect, personalize the info and interact with it.
Our brains like novelty® ho stimulus effect. Dissonance is another novel technique (Tik Liem). This causes higher engagement of attention allowing the instructor an inroad for learning. Have students get ‘in the moment’ with the info. As they personalize, have them respond see/hear/smell? What did I learn? This provides an avenue for the academic info to hitchhike along with the engaged mind. Multimodal pathways (redundancy) mean greater memory retention and recall.

Education is about increasing the patterns that students use, recognize, and communicate. As the ability to work and see patterns expands. The executive memory functions are enhanced. Whenever new material is presented in such a way that students see relationships, they generate greater brain cell activity (forming new neural connections) and achieve more successful long-term memory storage and retrieval.

Self Leadership and the One Minute Manager : Increasing Effectiveness Through Situational Self Leadership, by Ken Blanchard, Susan Fowler, Lawrence Hawkins. www.kenblanchard.com
Hardcover: 176 pages; Publisher: William Morrow (May 24, 2005); ISBN: 0060799129. Self Leadership and the One Minute Manager clearly and thoroughly reveals how power, freedom, and autonomy come from having the right mind-set and the skills needed to take personal responsibility for success. “Ultimately, it's in your own best interest to accept responsibility for getting what you need to succeed.” Self leadership can be achieved by practising three skills: challenge assumed constraints; celebrate your points of power; collaborate for success. Self leaders require different levels of direction and support as they consolidate their competence and commitment at each stage of their development. We can empower ourselves by utilising the guidance and support of our peers. For such a small book & such a fast read this was a powerful book. It has life changing lessons that I plan to implement in my every day. I highly recommend this book to anyone who feels stuck in the life they are in, & let the lesson begin for your new journey. Discover the magic of no excuses! [The following is what I highlighted during my read of this excellent book -- I recommend it on my Top-ten List of Peace resources. My purpose in providing them is to interest you, the reader, and hope that you will obtain and read the complete work. To properly understand the highlights, you need to read the book to put them in the proper context.]
Introduction
“I want people who are problem solvers and are willing to take the initiative. I want people working for me who act like they own the place.”
… like empowered people …
… want honesty.
… want opportunities to constantly learn new skills.
… managers today, if they are to be effective, must think and act in different ways.
What’s the solution? How can we help people move from a victim mind-set to flourishing as empowered problem solvers and decision makers?

1. Do You Believe in Magic?
… a victim of circumstance … a person who refuses to take responsibility for the situation he’s in. It’s easier to blame everyone else around you, rather than taking responsibility for yourself.
… turn the problem upside down … so that you’re the one on top.
You are ready for self leadership when you take responsibility for your own success.
The problem with being empowered is that when things go wrong, you have no excuses. There’s no one to blame but yourself.
Empowerment is something someone gives you. Self leadership is what you do to make it work.
2. People Are Not Mind Readers
… pass on the learning to others.
Each of us has different things that motivate us.
… what motivates you today may change tomorrow.
Ultimately, it's in your own best interest to accept responsibility for getting what you need to succeed …
I need you to believe in the magic of self leadership.

3. Elephant Thinking
… no boss can know and provide the motivation that every individual needs.
… creating a work environment that is motivating to us.
An ‘Assumed Constraint’ is a belief you have, based on past experience, that limits your current and future experiences.
… greatest gift is to know your own mind.
The First Trick of a Self Leader: Challenge Assumed Constraints!
How could he open their minds?

4. Cycles of Power
… all the negative stereotypes we have about power today …
… I feel powerless …
Because I’m not in a position to get people to do what I want them to do…
Don’t buy into the assumed constraint that position power is the only power that works.
… knowing the system … is an important point of power.
… knowledge power.
… personal power … ability to give assurance to people …
… relationship power.
… cultivating those relationships and simply asking for leads.
You don’t have to agree with everything … just take it into account.
… task power.
… position power.
“The only way in which anyone can lead you is to restore to you the belief in your own guidance.” Henry Miller
The 5 Points of Power: Position Power, Knowledge Power, Task Power, Relationship Power, Personal Power.
You need to know the nature of your strengths – your power – before you can lead yourself.
… cultivate them. …
“The sole advantage of power is ability to do more good.” Balthazar Gracian
The Second Trick of Self Leadership: Celebrate Your Points of Power.

5. Diagnose Yourself
Commitment is measured by your motivation and confidence about the goal.
Competence – to increase your competence to achieve a goal, you need: Direction from someone who will:

set a clear goal
generate an action plan
show you how to do the goal or skill
clarify roles
provide timelines
establish priorities
monitor and evaluate your work and give feedback

Commitment – to build your commitment to achieve a goal, you need: Support from someone who will:

listen to you
praise and encourage you
facilitate your problem solving
ask you for input
provide rationale (remind you why you’re doing it)
share information about their experiences relevant to the goal
share information about the organization relevant to the goal

… what to ask for at each development level.
When your competence is low, you need direction; when your commitment is low, you need support.

6. Getting What You Need
The Needs Model:

7. Running Together
You asked for help and that takes strength. It’s hard to turn someone down who knows what they need.
When Goals work out, it is usually because you instinctively take the initiative to be a self leader and get what you need to succeed.
There is magic in diagnosing your development level and getting the direction and support you need to achieve your goal.
The Third Trick of Self Leadership: Collaborate for Success!

8. No Excuses
… leverage your partnership and come up with a plan …
… get the feedback …
The two most powerful words to collaborate for success are: “I need”.
When you use the ‘I need’ phrase, you’re coming from a position of strength. You’ve thought about what it’s going to take to succeed and are requesting a person’s help. It’s amazing, but human beings love to feel needed. They love to think they can help you. ‘I need’ is very compelling.
Don’t get derailed by disillusionment!
A leader is anyone who can give you the support and direction you need to achieve your goal.

9. One Minute Magic
Self leaders:
Challenge Assumed Constraints,
Celebrate Their Points of Power,
And Collaborate For Success.
Teach other the magic of self leadership.

Behind Open Doors
Colin Powell's seven laws of power
by Oren Harari
He has commanded armies and headed government agencies—and now as U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell is in every sense a world leader. Through the years, in each position of growing authority, he has followed a code of leadership that inspires confidence, trust, and admiration.

'The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them.'

Powell and I became friends after we both spoke at an IBM-sponsored conference in 1996. Over time and from our many discussions, I formulated a point-by-point guide to Powell's style, a kind of Leadership 101. Surprisingly, for a lifelong Army man, many of his strategies seem to fly in the face of traditional military thinking. As I began developing these principles into a book about Powell's innate management skills, I at first viewed the project as primarily for business leaders. But in the days following the September attacks in New York and Washington—as Powell displayed his assured, dignified, and well-prepared style—it became clear to me that everyone has a vital interest in having a clear understanding of the Powell Way. What's more, I firmly believe that Powell's insights are of immense practical value for anyone faced with important decisions, whether business or personal. Here are seven of his key principles.
1. Dare To Be the Skunk
"Every organization," says Powell, "should tolerate rebels who tell the emperor he has no clothes ... and this particular emperor expects to be told when he is naked." As a young officer out of the ROTC program at New York's City College, Powell headed a platoon in Vietnam—where he learned something about how not to lead others. "We accepted that we had been sent to pursue a policy that had become bankrupt," he wrote in his best-selling autobiography. "The top leadership never went to the Secretary of Defense or the President and said, 'This war is unwinnable the way we are fighting it.'... They bowed to group-think pressures and kept up pretenses."
Powell and many other junior officers vowed that someday, when they were in charge, they would not make the same mistake. Years later, during Desert Storm, he would put that principle into practice. Almost immediately after becoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989, Powell huddled with President George Bush's senior staff, debating how best to respond to the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. The group agreed that the United States should continue to defend Saudi Arabia from invasion. But what about pushing the Iraqis out of Kuwait? Only Powell was willing to bring up that potentially devastating question. "I guess some people suggested that that was not the correct thing for me to ask," he says. "But I asked it."
He went even further, suggesting that the President draw his famous rhetorical "line in the sand." And, he recalls, "That was not a well-received statement." In fact, then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney bluntly criticized Powell.
"Perhaps I was the ghost of Vietnam," he says. "There had been cases in our past when senior leaders, military leaders, did not force civilians to make those kinds of clear choices, and if it caused me to be the skunk at the picnic, take a deep breath."
Of course, Powell is a gentleman. He's not rude or mean. As a good leader, he patiently builds a consensus, prodding people while simultaneously listening, learning, and involving them. But in the final analysis, he says, "Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off."
2. To Get the Real Dirt, Head For the Trenches
"The people in the field are closest to the problem," Powell says. "Therefore, that is where the real wisdom is." On the eve of the Desert Storm campaign, Powell solicited enlisted men and women for advice on winning the war.
"When a captain came to see me," he recalls, "I would tell him to sit down. I'd say, 'Talk to me, son. What have you got?' And then I'd let him argue with me, as if he were arguing with an equal. After all, he knew more about the subject than I did.
"I also knew he'd tell his friends that he had argued with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Word would spread, and people would understand that when they came into my office I really wanted to hear what they thought." And that he trusted their opinions.
Leaders who ask for straight talk from the trenches must graciously accept information and diverse opinions—even ideas they don't want to hear. "The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them," says Powell. Such encouragement can be nonverbal. The first time I walked into his office, Powell came around his vast desk and warmly ushered me into an alcove, where we sat, almost touching, at a far smaller, round table. He explained that the table sends a message of intimacy and trust. He wants visitors to know that he genuinely wants to hear what they have to say.
3. Share the Power
"Plans don't accomplish work," says Powell. "It is people who get things done." He adheres to two basic leadership premises: 1) People are competent and 2) Every job is important.
"Everybody has a vital role to play," he told his State Department staff when he took over as Secretary. "And it is my job to convey down through every layer to the last person in the organization the valuable role they perform."

'The best leaders should never ignore their own hard-won experience.'

The flip side to that leadership style is more responsibility on the part of those being led. The day he was promoted to lieutenant general and placed in command of V Corps in Germany, Powell received this letter from the Chief of Staff of the Army: "If in two years you have not heard from me offering you a second position or promoting you to four stars, I expect you to have your resignation on my desk." Two years later, four-star General Powell was in the White House as National Security Adviser.
"He expected me to retire if he couldn't use me anymore," Powell explains simply.
4. Know When To Ignore Your Advisers
Experts, advisers, and consultants will only get you so far. Eventually a leader must make the final decisions. In Vietnam, Powell recalls asking a Vietnamese army officer why an outpost had been put in such a vulnerable spot. The officer explained that some military experts wanted it there to supply a nearby airfield. So then, asked Powell, why was the airfield there? The officer replied, "To resupply the outpost."
"Experts often possess more data than judgment," says Powell. "Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world." The best leaders, he believes, should never ignore their own hard-won experience.
5. Develop Selective Amnesia
Too many leaders get so trapped in fixed ways of seeing things that they can't cope when the world changes. In the spring of 1988, Powell flew to Moscow to prepare for a presidential summit. Sitting across the table, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev delivered momentous news, saying, in effect: "I'm ending the Cold War, and you're going to have to find a new enemy."
As Powell recalls it, his initial mental reaction was, "But I don't want to!" After investing 28 years in seeing the Soviet Union as an enemy, he realized that "everything I had worked against no longer mattered." But he regained his footing, adjusted to the new world order, and helped guide modern U.S. foreign policy.
While we all have preconceived notions, Powell says, "Never let ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it."
6. Come Up For Air
Powell demands excellence from his staff, but he also insists they have lives outside the office. Again, he leads by example: He has always devoted as much time as possible to Alma, his wife of 39 years, and their children, Mike, Linda, and Annemarie. "I don't have to prove to anybody that I can work sixteen hours a day if I can get it done in eight," he told his State Department staff. "If I'm looking for you at 7:30 at night and you are not in your office, I'll consider you a wise person. Anybody who is logging hours to impress me, you are wasting time."
7. Declare Victory and Quit
"Command is lonely," says Powell. And so is the decision to withdraw from the position of authority—a choice he says not every leader makes soon enough. His own retirement from the military was, in his word, "traumatic."
"One of the saddest figures in all of Christendom," he says, "is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, once removed, driving around with a baseball cap pulled over his eyes, making his strategic choice as to whether it's going to be McDonald's or Taco Bell."
Powell didn't stay retired in 1993. Now in civilian clothes, he helps lead not only the military but the nation itself. He is equal to the task in no small measure because of the lessons he has learned and the principles he lives by.
"Leadership," he says, "is not rank, privilege, titles, or money. It's responsibility."
Oren Harari, author of The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (McGraw-Hill, February 2002), is professor of management at the University of San Francisco's McLaren Graduate School of Business

Behind Open Doors
Colin Powell's seven laws of power
by Oren Harari
He has commanded armies and headed government agencies—and now as U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell is in every sense a world leader. Through the years, in each position of growing authority, he has followed a code of leadership that inspires confidence, trust, and admiration.

'The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them.'

'The best leaders should never ignore their own hard-won experience.'

Managing Your Classroom with Heart: A Guide for Nurturing Adolescent Learners by Katy Ridnouer Introduction
Although the United States trains more than enough teachers to meet its needs, the attrition rate for educators is higher than that of any other professional occupation. According to a report from the National Commission for Teaching and America's Future, up to one-third of new U.S. teachers leave the profession within the first few years.* I was one of them.
In my second year, I taught 8th grade language arts in a school full of challenges. I felt isolated, unsafe, and incapable, but I trudged on. I met with parents, I brainstormed with colleagues, and I discussed issues with members of the administration. Nothing changed. At the end of the year, I decided to leave teaching for the quiet solitude of the bookseller's life.
For six months or so, I convinced myself that I had made a good choice. Then the dreams about my classroom started. I was in front of my 8th graders, leading a grammar lesson. I saw their willing faces. I saw them. I then realized that I had expected everyone else to change while I remained the same. I expected the surly child to be pleasant, but I did nothing to encourage this behavior. I expected the underachieving child to work to his potential, but I did nothing to bring this about. I even expected the motivated child to stay motivated but did nothing to contribute to that end. My eyes opened, I returned to teaching and I have never looked back.
I identify as a teacher. It's what I am meant to do, and it is as rewarding to me as art is to the artist, a great play is to the athlete, and the correct diagnosis is to the doctor. When I see students grapple with a concept and come away with new understanding of the material and a new respect for themselves, the long hours I invest hardly matter.
Although I found my way back to the classroom, many others do not. And when nearly half of all new teachers leave the classroom by the end of their fifth year, it creates a cumulative loss of experience for our schools and our communities. We lose the practical skills a teacher can acquire only by working with students; we lose the insights gained by connecting with students from varied backgrounds; and we lose the passion of someone who set out to change children's lives.
What can be done to decrease the attrition rate? What can be done to encourage teachers to stay? What can be done to make teaching as rewarding and fulfilling as we hoped it would be when we first decided to walk this path? This book is my response to these questions, based on my own experience. I have worked with many professionals who love to teach but are so frustrated that they have left the profession for some peace of mind. I know how frustrating it can be to attempt a task to which you're absolutely committed and yet still meet with failure day after day.
The kids whose stories I tell in this book attended an urban high school where minority students receiving free or reduced lunch comprised 40 percent of the student body. On the other end of the spectrum, 15 percent of the students were white and from affluent families. This disparity contributed to a tense environment that only furthered my determination to change the way I approached teaching.
Today, my guiding maxim as a teacher is to create a learning community within the four walls of the classroom. I define a learning community as a group of people who come together with a willing spirit to learn and support one another despite racial, economic, religious, and achievement differences. Learning communities promote curiosity, higher-level thinking, enhanced interpersonal skills, and confidence in both students and teachers. I have found that the key to creating a learning community is to manage your classroom with heart—and by that, I mean permeate the classroom atmosphere with caring concern. This involves care in interactions with students, lesson planning, seating chart decisions, discipline concerns, grading, and more. Putting your care for your students first creates a learning community that inspires them to be their best selves, both in school and out in the world.
When I went back to the classroom, I changed the way I perceived my job. Instead of trying to be a commander, I became a facilitator. A commander issues orders that have been handed down from the higher-ups and does so without much thought to the students involved; a facilitator creates guidelines that help her understand her students so she can find a way to help them meet curricular goals—a way that takes account of their background, of who they are, and of what else is going on in their lives. To become a facilitator, I had to change the way I responded to student behaviors that bothered me. I had to accept that my students would have worldviews different from mine, and I had to accept that the difference was a good thing.
Most significantly, I had to care about my students, which was something I hadn't really allowed myself to do before. Sure, I was friendly to them and I wanted them to succeed, but I can't say I was a caring teacher. Frankly, I saw caring as a risky venture. I worried that my feelings might be hurt if my students mocked my concern for them or if they didn't reciprocate it. I worried that I might get caught up in my students' personal concerns and neglect their academic achievement. I worried that the administration would think I had “gone soft.” But on my second go-round, I decided to take the risk: to allow myself to care about my students—to nurture them and their learning. I am a happier teacher, a better teacher, and a richer human being because of it. My great hope is that by welcoming my students into my heart, I have enriched their lives. My hope for you, reading this book, is that you and your students will be enriched through your own caring concern.
Students know who they can and can't learn from. My first year back, I began asking my students to fill out an anonymous survey at the end of the year as a way to help me gauge the type of teacher-student interaction that is the most beneficial. The survey went on to become an annual ritual, and I've reproduced a copy of it in Figure 1.Figure 1. Survey
1. Can you learn from a teacher you dislike? Why or why not
2. How did a teacher you dislike make you feel about yourself
3. Describe a teacher you dislike (no names, please!)
4. Can you learn from a teacher you care about? Why or why not
5. How did a teacher you care about make you feel about yourself
6. Describe a teacher you care about

The first question the survey asks students is whether they can learn from a teacher they dislike. Every year, the students overwhelmingly reply no. The next question on the survey asks them to describe how a teacher they disliked made them feel about themselves. Here's a sample of the kind of responses I get:

“Like no matter how much I tried, I would still fail his class.”
“Slow, dumb, and like a troublemaker.”
“A little helpless, because I did not know how to do the work.”
“She didn't make me feel anything. I have no interest in the subject and I don't really care about the teacher.”
“He made me feel as if his class was too hard for me.”
“I used to feel bad, but through different situations and maturity, I saw I am me and whatever I want to be I can be, regardless.”
“He makes me feel like I am not even there, and that he doesn't have time to answer a silly question I might have.”
“This teacher makes me feel like chopped liver. I don't think I can remember a time where I've been so embarrassed to go into a class. I feel like I do not even matter.”

As you see, these responses are full of hostility, lowered self-worth, anxiety, shame, and anger. The only positive one involves a student who was able to think highly of herself in spite of the teacher. The next question asks the students to describe the teacher they dislike. Here are some typical responses:

“She gives no help, cannot control the class, and is quick to kick people out.”
“He acts like he doesn't have time for extra help when you don't understand.”
“She's all in your face, like you're doing well, socializing with you, but you're not doing well.”
“I don't think that he likes black students.”
“Crabby, cranky, always gives busy work, whiny, mean, only here for job, doesn't care about us, our feelings, our future.”
“She notices that you are struggling, but doesn't try to help.”
“Insults you or makes you feel lower than them. Will not let you voice your opinion in a calm way. Piles you down with work and then doesn't grade it.”

These teachers chose to show negative sides of their personalities. At least, it's the negative side that lingers in the memories of these students, who saw them 48 minutes a day, 5 times a week, and 180 days a year—plenty of time to collect and store an opinion of these professionals assigned to guide their learning lives. Some of these students resolved that they just had to “get over not liking the teacher.” Instead of focusing on learning the subject matter, which any professional teacher would agree should be all students' top priority, these kids were preoccupied with learning how to get along with the teacher. I do not believe these teachers would like to be seen in this fashion, especially given the possibility that students were not learning precisely because of their negative perceptions of these teachers.
Then the survey asks students to describe a teacher they care about. Again, their responses do not vary much:

“She really shows that she cares about her work and her students.”
“She stays on my back and makes me want to learn.”
“She is calm, nice, and loves astronomy.”
“She shares her intelligence with me.”
“She takes me step by step and makes it fun.”
“She gives me confidence that she knows I can do or achieve something. She tells me I'm doing a good job and that she knows I'm going to make it in the future.”
“She's nice and wants you to learn and earn good grades. All jokes aside until the time is right.”
“She makes you enjoy her class.”
“The teachers that I love most are funny and they feel comfortable in a student atmosphere. Yet work is being accomplished at the same time.”

Yes, the overall quality that these students are responding to is care. They love the teachers who care about them; that feeling overflows into their attitude toward themselves as learners and, ultimately, into their attitude toward the subject matter.
Next, the survey asks students to describe how the teacher they care about makes or made them feel about themselves. Here's a look at how they respond:

“Like I was smart and bright.”
“Like if I listen, pay attention, and put some effort into it, I can do the work.”
“Like I was somebody.”
“Glad that I signed up for the course.”
“Like I could learn anything.”
“Confident.”
“She makes me feel good about myself because she told me it was OK to make mistakes as long as you learn from them.”

The feeling of self-worth these students' comments express is a bridge to any kind of success. When these students believed in themselves, they found that each of their subjects was easier.
Years of student responses to this survey have convinced me that it is essential to accept students as they are and to make sure they know that we care about them enough to provide the structure and support that will help them grow. If we nurture all students as individuals, they become more confident and gain a better sense of who they are and what they want out of life. The budding scientists, dancers, journalists, business owners, musicians, and CEOs need to communicate their dream for their future with someone who cares about them and will help them achieve that dream. Even a math teacher with a student who is an artist in the making can recognize her gifts, call her “the future artist,” and inform her of upcoming art shows. By caring for and about every student, we increase the odds of our students' personal and professional success tremendously.
I have seen myself how caring for students helps a teacher meet curricular goals; tapping into the excitement of reaching a child emotionally provides energy to reach that child academically. Try out the many approaches that I illustrate throughout this book, and you will find yourself concentrating less on “dealing with” your students and more on inspiring them. It is my hope that as you put my guidelines into practice, you will begin to develop your own classroom management style—one that's a perfect fit for both your personality and your school. This book is intended as a starting point. Your final destination is entirely up to you.

Endnote

* Fulton, K., Yoon, I., & Lee, C. (2005, August). Induction into learning communities. Washington, DC: National Commission for Teaching and America's Future. Available: 2100 M Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037. **Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.**.
Chapter 1. Choosing to Care---There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. —Albert Einstein

Teaching adolescents is a tough job. Those of us who enter the profession with glorious visions of intellectual conversations and quiet, industrious classrooms soon realize that these come only through lots of hard work, convincing, and cheerleading.
We also find that being a teacher involves much more than teaching a subject. Our job is to educate the population we have been given to teach: to teach these particular students to learn and to learn about themselves. Before we begin to think about curriculum, we must make a connection with our students and establish a classroom environment in which they feel safe, physically and intellectually. We must convince them that we will protect them in this way, and we must help them be physically comfortable enough to access their intellect.
There are many obstacles that can stand in the way of this connection, including age difference, economic difference, values difference, and attitude difference. As professionals, we have to make it our job to recognize these obstacles, plan for them, and deal with them. When we bridge the gaps and connect with our students—when we manage our classrooms with heart—we move closer to the vision of the teacher we want to be and the classroom we want to have. Once students know that we care about them, that we are on their team, they will learn any grammar rule and read any book.

A Look into an Uncaring Classroom

Trust in yourself. Your perceptions are often far more accurate than you are willing to believe. —Claudia Black
Every day at lunch, Ms. Hall mutters, “I can't stand them. They think they're cute, but they're not. Not in the least.”
She never expected to dread her fourth period sophomore English class this way. She readily admits that one of her students, James, controls the classroom. James has ADHD and comes from a troubled home. He is also really smart. Ms. Hall complains that nothing works to “shut James up.” When the rest of the class is discussing the previous day's reading, he regularly interrupts with stories from his own life.
Today is no different.
“Yesterday we continued our reading of The Pearl,” says Ms. Hall, beginning the day's lesson. “What seemed to be something that could bring great joy, now seems to be wreaking havoc on the family. As we—”
“Ms. Hall, I was thinking that this novel is a lot like my own life,” James interrupts.
“Well, that's no surprise, James,” Ms. Hall replies, “but we do not have the time to talk about that right now.”
“Oh, it'll just take a minute,” James promises.
Ms. Hall relents, and James begins.
“Well, you know how in the story Kino beats his wife? Well, my mom is telling her lawyer that my dad beats her and that's why she wants a divorce. She also figures it will help her alimony case. Well, I told my dad what my mom was planning. Now he's even madder at her, and he says she will only get half of everything now, just like the law says. And now my mom is pissed at me because she overheard me on the phone with my dad talking about where I'd like to live. I made a joke about how he might hit me if I didn't live with him. Well, my dad thought it was funny, but my mom sure didn't. Now I'm staying with my dad until my mom cools off. Weird, huh?”
“Yeah, weird,” agrees Ms. Hall. She is careful to keep her voice even and hide her growing impatience. “But, James? I do not see how that relates to The Pearl. Let's get back to the lesson now, OK?”
Cynthia raises her hand.
“Yes, Cynthia. You have something to contribute?”
“Ms. Hall, what happened to James has happened to me too.”
“No, Cynthia, we really don't—”
“It'll only take a minute!” Cynthia insists, and then continues with her story.
Some of the students are pleased that they have gotten off task, but others can see Ms. Hall's anger mounting. By the time Cynthia is finished, Ms. Hall cannot contain it any longer. “Cynthia, did you just waste five minutes of class time to tell us about your grandmother's lungs? Why does this matter to us? How does it relate to The Pearl? I'll know better than to call on you next time.”
“Ms. Hall, my story is certainly more interesting than this crap by Steinbeck,” Cynthia retorts.
“You know you cannot talk to me like that,” Ms. Hall points out.
“I just did,” Cynthia says.
“I would never in my life have spoken to a teacher in the way you have just spoken to me!”
“You were disrespectful to me, so I'm disrespectful to you.”
Ms. Hall sighs deeply. She rubs her eyes and runs her fingers through her hair, the same hair the kids love to ask her questions about. (“How long does it take to dry?” “Why don't you ever wear it down?” “Is that your natural color?”) She remembers this and thinks, annoying, annoying, annoying. Then she says, “You know, this is supposed to be an advanced class.”
She now has almost everyone's attention. But not James's. “Can I go to the bathroom?” he interrupts.
“May I, you mean, and yes, you may,” Ms. Hall answers wearily. “Get the pass off my desk.”
James jumps up, taps a girl on the head, grabs the pass, and twirls out of the class. The students are in hysterics. Ms. Hall is furious.
“OK, is that what you want? You want to watch a foolish child leap around because he can't hold it for another 25 minutes until class is over? You guys are on your own. Silently—that means no noise—silently, I want you to read to page 95 and then tell me how the pearl is affecting the decisions that the family has to make. I want three paragraphs, in ink, turned in at the end of the period. This is for an essay grade.”
“Ms. Hall, you want us to read 15 pages and write an essay in 25 minutes? You're nuts!” Tommy calls out. His classmates murmur their agreement. For Ms. Hall, this is the last straw.
“That's it! Tommy, go to lockout. I'm sick of you kids being so disrespectful. What can I do to teach you not to be so disrespectful? Never mind. You're in the 10th grade; you should know how to behave.”
Tommy has not moved.
“Tommy, go!” Ms. Hall commands.
“Why should I? I just said what everyone is thinking,” Tommy responds.
“Oh, you know best,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Just stay seated and do your work.”
“I need a book,” Lynda says.
“Me too,” says Mary.
“Oh, yeah, my mom left mine on the kitchen counter,” says Ronnie.
“You guys know I don't have extras. How can we do silent reading if you can't bring your books?” Exasperated, Ms. Hall pairs the students up, ignoring the whispers and the note writing. The class settles into a low hum. Just three students are actually working on the assignment.
Ms. Hall goes to her desk in the back of the room. Just as she sits down, James walks in, saying, “You wouldn't believe what someone—”
Ms. Hall interrupts James with a loud “Shhh! Sit down and do the assignment.”
“What's the assignment?” James asks. “Oh, and does anybody else need the pass?”
“James, I tell people if they can use the pass or not, not you,” Ms. Hall says.
“I need it, Ms. Hall. I have to call home. It's an emergency,” Tonda says, unconvincingly.
Ms. Hall hands Tonda the pass and then tells James, “Read to page 95 and then write a three-paragraph essay about how the pearl is affecting the decisions that the family is making.”
“We're not going to read out loud? Come on. Who wants to read out loud?” James asks, looking around for votes.
“Yeah, Ms. Hall. We'll never be able to read this on our own,” Latisha chimes in.
“You guys are pitiful,” Ms. Hall says, but she relents. “OK. Out loud. James, you start on page 80.”
“But I'm already on page 85. That's not fair,” says Stephen, who has been working conscientiously.
“You will just have to start over with us or continue reading on your own,” Ms. Hall replies.
Stephen scowls and pulls out his math book to start his homework for that class.
The rest of the students lean over their books and pretend to be following along with James. Ms. Hall makes no attempt to define the words that she suspects are unfamiliar, and she does not stop to ask questions to gauge how well the students are understanding the novel. She keeps her eyes on her book. James reads on.
Finally, the bell rings. “Do the essay for homework!” Ms. Hall yells over the ringing.

Caring as an Avenue to Teaching---It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. —Seneca

Ms. Hall acknowledges that these students are, in fact, “advanced” students, yet when they try to create a connection from their lives to the story, she becomes frustrated. She doesn't recognize the value of their sharing their personal lives. A caring teacher realizes that behavior that is a distraction often provides insight into the students' needs and personal situations. In this case, Ms. Hall could have used the information her students had volunteered to enrich the lesson plan and strengthen classroom relationships. James was the first student to cause a disruption. Ms. Hall knows that James has a lot going on in his life. Although she hears the story that James tells about his home situation, she does not pick up on the desire to feel understood that lies beneath it. By listening attentively to his story, she is telling him that his use of class time is valid; and yet, she does nothing to try to connect his story with the lesson.
Ms. Hall could meet James's needs by actually listening to his words and picking up on the energy he uses to tell the story. If she had taken the time to do that, the situation might have gone like this:
Ms. Hall: James, it sounds to me like you feel torn choosing between your mother's side and your father's side.
James: Yeah. It's hard, you know? I'm an only child. I don't have a brother or a sister to talk to.
Ms. Hall: So it's easy to see your home situation in every part of your life. So much so that when you read that Kino beat his wife, you thought of your mom. . . .
James: Yeah. I do that a lot when I read. I see stuff that goes on in my life in the story that I'm reading. Is that weird?
Ms. Hall: Class, what do you think? Is it weird to connect your own life with what you read?
In this scenario, Ms. Hall connects with James and reframes his behavior as a connection to a curriculum-related topic. “How life and literature mix” can be a difficult concept for students to grasp, but James's concrete example is a great illustration. Ms. Hall's sympathetic response to James makes it more likely that other students in the class will be willing to contribute honestly to a discussion of this topic.
This same sort of approach could be used with Cynthia, who sees a similarity between her grandmother's life and the life of the novel's main character but cannot quite verbalize it. Does Ms. Hall see Cynthia's story as a potential bridge to the novel's content? Does Ms. Hall help Cynthia step up to make that connection? No. Ms. Hall gets angry because Cynthia did not make her story relevant to the lesson. Here's another, much more positive way Ms. Hall could have responded:
Ms. Hall: I understand that your grandmother is a really strong person who didn't give in when she was a child. But I'm having a hard time seeing how Kino is like your grandma.
Cynthia: My grandma had such a hard life for such a long time, and she made it even worse by smoking.
Ms. Hall: By smoking?
Cynthia: Yeah! She can't go anywhere without an oxygen tank, and nobody will hire her with that thing. She's been on welfare for 20 years.
Ms. Hall: And how is her life like Kino's?
Cynthia: Well, Kino's life was never great, just like my grandma's wasn't ever great, but she used to able to breathe at least. Kino loved his wife. He didn't beat her, I mean. That is, until the pearl came along and ruined everything.
Ms. Hall: In your grandma's life, what do you see as similar to the pearl?
Cynthia: The cigarettes. The cigarettes ruined her life, like the pearl ruined Kino's. She thought smoking would make her look glamorous and attract wealthy men. She spent her time trying to look good instead of educating herself. The knight in shining armor never came, but the lung cancer sure did.
Ms. Hall: Now I see your connection with the book. Kino allowed the pearl to dictate his actions, like your grandmother allowed the cigarettes to dictate hers. So, what are some things in our own lives that are like the pearl? This question is open to the class. . . .
In this alternative scenario, Cynthia is validated both emotionally and intellectually. And again, the rest of the class also benefits because this real-life example of a situation similar to that in the novel gives them another way to relate personally to the story.
A second problem in this classroom is that it's not the teacher but the students who are in charge. Students today have mastered the art of manipulating the direction of a lesson by acting out or changing the subject; they knock the teacher off track, and the teacher has a difficult time getting back to the point. Ms. Hall has fallen into this trap. More than likely, James doesn't really need to go to the bathroom. He's on autopilot; when the classroom gets dull, he finds a way to get out. Ms. Hall is left seething, but she is too angry to recall what she was saying prior to his interruption.
When students do this, we have to recognize it for what it is: an attempt at control. Students want to feel that they are in a controlled environment. I do not mean a dictatorship type of control, but a managed control, where reasonable, logical thinking reigns. If the teacher is not controlling the class, the class will control itself. Ms. Hall needs to recognize this. She needs to stop and assess the situation: This is James. He always asks to use the restroom, but I need to finish what I'm saying. She might then just look at James and raise her index finger to indicate “just a minute please,” telling James that she has heard him but that he will have to wait until she has a spare moment. Doing this also sends the rest of the class the message that interruptions are not acceptable and that the teacher is in control. This helps Ms. Hall maintain a calm classroom where the students feel they can let down their guard and listen to what she is saying. When Ms. Hall does return to James and allows him to go to the restroom, he will have had time to calm down too. Perhaps he won't act out on his way out the door. If he does, Ms. Hall might inform him that she needs to speak with him privately in the hall when he returns. This tells James that his behavior is unacceptable but that he himself is worthy of respectful treatment. It also tells the class that their teacher does not tolerate this unacceptable behavior.
With a little more effort, Ms. Hall could eliminate the other students' off-task behavior through closer monitoring. After giving the reading assignment, she might give students a minute or two to get out their books and become settled, but then she should insist on quiet because that is what is needed for this activity. As students work, Ms. Hall might walk around the classroom looking for off-task behavior, including students writing personal notes, talking with seatmates, or working on homework from another class. She might give students who are off task a squeeze on the shoulder or a steady look in the eyes—providing correction but not embarrassment. The students are likely to show their appreciation by cooperating. Ms. Hall might also read along silently with the students or make herself available by being in their direct line of vision. This monitoring also sends a message that she is serious about the assignment. And if James makes a noisy re-entrance, Ms. Hall could simply direct him to go back outside and accompany him for a little chat, keeping the door cracked so that she can peek in to check on the class but still ensure privacy in her dealings with James.
James needs to know how his behavior makes his teacher feel. Often, students are unaware that they are irritating someone else. The dialogue might proceed like this:
Ms. Hall: James, the way you interact in my class tells me that I've given you the wrong idea about how I want you to behave.
James: What do you mean?
Ms. Hall: I mean, I've told you not to interrupt me or anyone else, but I haven't always ignored your interruptions the way I should have. If I had done a better job of that, you'd know that you were interrupting. Maybe you would learn to think before you speak and perhaps raise your hand when you have something to add.
James: I never thought about it like that.
Ms. Hall: I also must be too tolerant of your goofy behavior because otherwise you wouldn't make such a scene entering and exiting the class.
James: Oh, that's just me. I always do that.
Ms. Hall: It frustrates me when you do it because instead of the students working on English, they are laughing at you.
James: True. I don't mean to make you frustrated. I'm just in it for the laugh, you know?
Ms. Hall: I know, and that's normal. Still, could you try to be calm and quiet when I do allow you to leave the classroom? I would appreciate it.
James: I'll try, but I might need a reminder.
Ms. Hall: No problem. OK, let's go back into the room.
In this conversation, James is validated that he is a normal person, but he just needs to tone down his behavior. He has also had the opportunity to see Ms. Hall as a person—not as a ranting teacher who is annoyed that he is controlling the class yet again. The other students see James walking in quietly and a calm look on Ms. Hall's face. The show is over and everything's OK. They have nothing left to do but get back to work.

Questions for Reflection

1. What can you do to show that you care for your students?
2. What student behaviors get under your skin?
3. What are your negative emotional reactions to these behaviors?
4. How might you reframe these behaviors to change your negative emotional reactions to positive reactions?
5. How might this reframing enhance your students' understanding of the lesson?
Chapter 3. Balancing Care and Discipline---Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what's next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark. —Agnes de Mille
Teaching is a high-wire act that must be practiced every day. We show our care for students through high expectations, awareness of their lives, and being human with them. Some days this is easy; other days it is not. One day a polite student will suddenly be rude. Find out why, privately and respectfully. Do not assume to know why a student is behaving poorly; make the leap to hear his response. Plan responses that will help you maintain your professionalism and respect each student's needs.
Another student stops coming to class because, as she tells you in the hallway, “I'm flunking anyway. So why bother?” It's a fair question. Call the student's home. Offer tutoring. Encourage her to come to class. Follow the disciplinary measures your school has designed. Do not take it as a personal affront; do not ignore or nag her. If you do, she will use your reaction as an excuse for her failure instead of trying to make a change for the better.
One year I had two students, both juniors, who just decided to stop coming to class. I used the tactics I've just described. I told both of them that they could make up the work. I talked to their parents. I told them every time that I saw them that I missed them and would love to help them. I wrote referrals to the office, and the administration disciplined them.
The result? One student began coming to class again; the other did not. The one who did, Megan, came to me at the end of the year to tell me “something very serious.” She said, “Ms. Ridnouer, you believed in me and kept encouraging me when nobody else did. Because of you, I believed in myself, passed your class, and did better in all of my classes. Thank you.” Lauren, who did not return to class, chose to fail, but she still turned in her textbook to me with a smile on her face. I hope she will turn that smile inward on herself and believe that she can pass junior English.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was right when he said that “the secret to education lies in respecting the pupil.” I respected Lauren as an individual, and she responded as an individual, which turned out not to be exactly the way I wanted her to respond. (Guideline #2: Stay focused on the problem. Guideline #4: Don't sell out your values.) No, she didn't learn all the material in the curriculum, but she did learn how to handle a problem without being rude or intolerant. If you treat each student as a unique individual with a life separate from your own experience, you will connect with that student or end the school year trying. That's all you can do.

Getting Past Personality Conflicts The life which is not examined is not worth living. —Plato

Have you ever had a student who pushed every one of your buttons? My “buttons” include know-it-all people, rude people, and argumentative, illogical people. Cecilia had all of these traits and displayed them fairly consistently. She was also an extremely bright girl who excelled in class work, but she struggled to complete tasks that required her attention over an extended period of time.
I allowed Cecilia to push my buttons, and, as a result, I let myself be angry and irrational toward her and the rest of the class. I was not respecting the dignity of Cecilia, her classmates, or myself. And I let myself stray from one of the most important pieces of advice I've ever received from a student: to never “turn” on the entire class out of exasperation with one disruptive student.
When I finally realized what was happening, I did many things. I revamped the seating chart, putting Cecilia in the front and center of the classroom. I talked to the students about my frustrations in working with the class, not mentioning Cecilia specifically. I also began ignoring her interruptions and insisting that she respond only when I asked everyone else to respond. (Guideline #2: Stay focused on the problem.) And I refused to listen to her flimsy arguments about late assignments and excuse notes. (Guideline #1: Don't let students fasttalk you.) Basically, I stopped allowing my annoyance with Cecilia's behavior to give her an avenue to escape responsibility for it. (Guideline #4: Don't sell out your values.)
The class took note, and they began ignoring Cecilia's rude comments too. They also seemed to focus more on the academics of the class instead of its internal chemistry. I began to see qualities in some of my other students that I hadn't had time to notice when I was allowing Cecilia to monopolize my attention.
What about Cecilia? How did she fare in all of this? Well, she began saying “I'm sorry” when she interrupted me and the other students, and as the days went on, she interrupted less often. She started showing up to class on time. Yes, she remained opinionated, but she no longer dominated class discussions. I left the door wide open for her to share her opinions, but her classmates and I stopped taking up her invitations to argue. The guidelines worked.

Creating Boundaries---It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living. —Simone de Beauvoir

Kids of all ages want boundaries. Think of the classroom as a soccer field. There are distinct lines demarcating both the “in” zones and the “out” zones. The players know when the ball is in play or out of play, and the spectators do too.
Of course, the reality is not quite so simple. The boundaries some teachers set are acceptable to the students, and they manage to stay within them rather easily. The boundaries other teachers set are unacceptable, and students find themselves straying out of bounds and constantly receiving negative responses from these teachers. If a teacher's response to a student's behavior is erratic, the student does not know from one day to the next if the teacher considers this student a “good” or a “bad” kid. This may seem trivial, but students paint themselves in the broad stripes of black or white, bad or good, and they assume that teachers see them the same way. When they cannot pinpoint exactly how you feel about them, they often decide that you think of them negatively, and they behave negatively in turn.
At the very beginning of the school year, let your students know where you draw the lines in your classroom and what constitutes behavior that is out of bounds. Set these boundaries according to your student population and your own comfort levels, and make sure the rules are clear. The message that students must receive is that you want a calm and orderly classroom and you will work hard to maintain it. Explain that your rules are there to help them choose their own behavior.
Students who choose to stay in the “in” zone by following the rules, being cooperative, and attending class every day could be doing it for any number of reasons, including habit and a desire to please you or their parents. Those who choose to enter the “out” zone by misbehaving, failing to do work, and arriving late to class could be making this choice for myriad reasons as well: They want attention, they are bored or frustrated, they are suffering some sort of abuse, or other reasons. Each student's choice sends a message that you should be receiving and responding to, especially the “out” zone choices.
As teachers, it's our responsibility to receive these messages, and classroom management is what makes this possible. In a chaotic classroom where rules change every day, it is difficult to know whether a student's rude remarks are due to the classroom environment or if there are other problems in her life that she is trying to relay. But if the rules are set, discussed, posted, and enforced consistently, you have a better chance of picking up the real meaning of what a student is saying instead of getting lost in the emotive aspects of her words. For example, should a student tell you that you chose to assign Huckleberry Finn because you are a racist who thinks blacks can only speak like stupid people, instead of being shocked into silence, you'll be able to talk to her about the issue. You can be certain that she has problems in her life that do not involve you, and she wants you to help her resolve them. She is asking for help the only way that many teenagers know how.
A calm classroom environment eliminates possibly distracting stimuli. This reduces the chance of poor behavior because the students feel more comfortable and can more readily choose to follow your directions and focus on the learning at hand. As teachers, we cannot control our students' behavior, but we can help delineate the behavioral choices they will feel good about making.

A Four-Step Process for Caring Discipline

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues. —Duke Ellington
Teachers should never make idle threats. Telling a student, “I am going to send you to the principal's office if you do that one more time,” does not generally change student behavior unless you intend to keep your eyes solely on that one child for the rest of the period. When a disciplinary situation arises, I follow a four-step process, which I've found to be a more effective use of my energy. It not only reduces whole-class involvement in incidents or altercations, it models the cool-as-a-cucumber behavior that students need to incorporate into their own lives, so they can build and maintain relationships throughout their lives.

Step 1: A nonverbal warning---When you notice someone whose behavior is off task or otherwise out of bounds, take a private, mostly nonverbal approach. Make eye contact, squeeze the student's shoulder, or lean down and whisper, “May I help you with something?”

These are all nonpunitive approaches that tell the student you're aware of what's going on and you would like it to stop. (Guideline #3: See the big picture.) Posing the question (“May I help you with something?”) also acknowledges the student might be engaging in the out-of-bounds behavior because of confusion about the assignment. (Guideline #2: Stay focused on the problem.) All of these caring, low-key, direct-contact approaches respect the student and give him a reason to simply stop doing what he is doing. It removes the chance of angering, shaming, or frustrating the child. The reverse tactic—yelling at the student to be quiet or sit down or sit up—gives him, and possibly the entire class, someone to respond to negatively.

Step 2: A verbal warning---If the student persists, quietly inform him that you will need to see him after class. This gives the student time to think about his actions and stop them, showing you that he is capable of working within your limits. It also tells the rest of the class that you are aware of the problem and will handle it. (Guideline #4: Don't sell out your values.)

When speaking to the student after class, ask him to explain why he was misbehaving and then listen closely to what he has to say. Let him talk without judging him, shaming him, or making excuses for him. Your role is to be a sounding board for how that student can stop the behavior.

Step 3: A private conversation---If the behavior persists or reoccurs during the same class period, figure out a way to have a private talk with the student right then. I usually meet with the student in the hallway. Of course, this can be frustrating if you are lecturing, for example, or conducting another activity that you must lead. (I keep an alternative assignment at the ready for just this kind of situation.) The temptation is certainly to send the student out or to ignore the behavior. Each teacher's decision here will be based on his or her level of tolerance and the kind of classroom atmosphere that's most conducive to the particular group of students' learning. (Guideline #3: See the big picture.) To me, sending the student out often feels as though I am giving up too soon. Ignoring the behavior reduces the lesson's effectiveness and sends the message that it's OK to disrupt class.

When you confer with a disruptive student during class, be brief. Most people quit listening after about 30 seconds of lecture, so it's essential to take advantage of this small window of time and get that student's attention. Use “I” messages: “I am trying to teach the class, but your constant disruptions are slowing me down. This frustrates me.” “I sense that you are having trouble settling in today.” Let the student respond from there. By not judging the student for his particular behavior, you open the door for an honest response that is more likely to lead to the problem's resolution.

Step 4: Removal from class and a conversation with parents---If the behavior persists, have the student removed from class. It is unfair to allow one person to dominate the class and cheat the other students out of their education. In our school, we have “lockout.” This is a monitored room where teachers send all tardy students and students who are causing disciplinary problems.

Whenever I must remove a student from class, I contact his or her parents that evening and explain the situation. I've learned that when speaking with a parent, it's helpful to continue the use of “I” messages: “I am concerned about your son's ability to achieve in my class. I hope that together we can come up with a strategy for success.” Make sure to have other pertinent information, such as the student's grades and attendance records, at your fingertips so that you will be able to give a full account of the student's situation and answer the parent's questions.
This four-step approach can work for every teacher. I find that it helps me achieve many positive emotional outcomes for the misbehaving student and also for myself and the rest of the class. The student comes away with a renewed awareness of behavioral expectations and a sense that I care about him as much as I care about my own personal need to teach the lesson. The rest of the class sees that their teacher respects students too much to embarrass them in front of their peers. They also see that misbehaving students will have chances to improve their behavior before suffering serious consequences. Of course, I win because, ultimately, I am able to resume my lesson plan and maintain a good relationship with my students.

Choosing Your Battles

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world. —Robert Louis Stevenson
Think about all the rules that govern student behavior. Some are set up for simple safety reasons; “no hitting” comes quickly to mind. But there are other rules with rationales that are not so clear, and if a teacher doesn't agree that these rules are necessary, that teacher is likely to be lax about enforcing them. A school might have 150 staff members, and with so many personalities scrutinizing each rule, varying interpretations and degrees of enforcement are to be expected.
Personally, I lump rules into two categories: rules that promote learning and rules that do not affect learning. A rule prohibiting tardiness is a good example of the first category. If students are allowed to simply trickle in, there's no definite beginning of the class, and this slows everyone down. In addition, we only have 48 minutes in a class period and I value every second as if it were gold. However, I once worked with a teacher who didn't share this outlook. Not only did she allow tardy students into her classroom without consequences, but she would write passes for students she didn't teach to excuse tardies to another teacher's class. To my mind, this policy taught the kids that for every rule, there is someone who will help you get around it.
I spent some time being frustrated over how this teacher was shortchanging her students (and mine!) when she wrote these illegitimate passes. Then I remembered the famous prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr that my grandmother had hanging in her kitchen: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I was in no position to tell another teacher how to conduct herself professionally. My challenge was to change the things I could change: how I ran my own classroom. I did this by telling my students that I would only accept passes from an administrator or their previous class's teacher. Since the illegitimate pass-writer taught the same grade and subject that I did, none of my students would ever find themselves in a position to get a legitimate pass from her.
At my school, when students are tardy without a pass, they must go to lockout and stay there for the entire period. They earn an unexcused absence, but they can make up the class work. I don't like my students to miss classroom time, but I stay firm on this rule to show that I value everyone's time. (Guideline #4: Don't sell out your values.) Even though it was hard to send a conscientious student like Lassandra to lockout when she was two minutes late, I did it. The rest of the class saw it, she saw it, and no one had a reason to question whether tardiness was a rule that I enforced.
Now, to the second category of rules: the kind that have no effect on learning. A perfect example is a rule prohibiting chewing gum—something that does not interfere with the educational process provided that students don't blow bubbles or chomp like mad dogs. It is also a rule that's difficult to monitor and enforce, as students can swallow the evidence and then put in a new piece five minutes later.
When I first began teaching, if I saw a student chewing gum, I would either bring over the garbage can or ask the student to get up and go spit out the gum. It took time away from my lesson, made the gum-chewer mad, and gave everyone else an opportunity to ask me why that rule was in place. I would invite students who asked me that question to stay after class to discuss the issue, at which time I would dutifully explain the policy. After a few of these after-class sessions, I realized I did not really care about gum chewing. I began asking students to spit out gum only if they were snapping it or blowing bubbles or otherwise distracting their classmates. (Guideline #3: See the big picture.) I did not tell the students about my decision; I just changed my reaction. It was never a problem after that.
I did have one student who seemed to get so lost in her work that she would start smacking and cracking her gum. When this happened, the entire class would let her know that this was unacceptable (“Gross, Demetria!”). She stopped, and I never had to say a word. Sometimes peer pressure can be a teacher's friend.

Referrals to the Office Things do not change; we change. —Henry David Thoreau

Many teachers rely on referrals to administrators to handle their discipline problems. Basically, these teachers are passing their responsibility for particular students to someone who has the power to remove the student from class for a few days. I am not saying there isn't a time and a place for referrals, but in my experience, consistently following the four guidelines allows teachers to solve most discipline problems on their own, without involving the administration. Students who do not respond to this approach need the attention of somebody besides a classroom teacher.
What about serious problems you might encounter outside the classroom—say, in the hallway or the cafeteria? There the standard for a referral might be a little lower. If I must intervene in incidents involving students I do not teach, I still attempt to follow the four guidelines; however, because I will not have the time to work with these kids or influence their behavior on a regular basis, I am quicker to write up referrals to the office. An administrator needs to get involved.
Some administrators are better than others at supporting teachers' disciplinary actions. Some won't support you at all, and although they probably won't come and tell you this, you'll get the message when your referrals are ignored or misplaced. I was in this situation once, and even after I spoke privately to the administrator about a lack of support, I saw no change. Remembering the Serenity Prayer, I decided to keep writing the referrals to this administrator, although I no longer expected a response. With each referral I wrote, I reminded this person that I was doing my job while he was not.
Speaking of which: Always keep a copy of every referral or other discipline documentation that you submit. Paperwork has a way of “walking away” in a busy school office. File your copy in a place where you can locate it quickly in case follow-up is necessary. It's also wise to document parent phone calls. Write down the dates you called and whether or not you made contact. If you keep this up to date, nobody can accuse you of failing to do your job.
Invariably, you will have students who need ongoing reminders of your policies. I recommend maintaining individual documentation folders for these students. And if you have students who are continually disruptive, keep individual journals documenting their behavior: simple descriptions of the student's actions and the dates they occurred. Make sure to include the good and the bad; when it comes time for the administration or student services to take action, you want them to be able to read this journal without thinking you have a certain bias against the student. Is maintaining a behavior journal on a student a sign that you “have it out” for that child? Quite the contrary: It's a sign of professional concern and says loud and clear, “I care about this child. Here is the pattern of behavior that needs immediate attention.”

Helping a Student Change His or Her Behavior

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit. —Helen Keller
Adolescent students like to be authorities over their own behavior, and they behave or misbehave to send whatever message they feel like sending at that moment. This message could come in the form of shooting spitballs at a classmate, talking back, sleeping at their desk, or staring out the window. If you have taken the time and care to develop a positive relationship with your students, they will usually change their behavior when you point out its negative impact on the class. In contrast, a teacher who relies on commands to change a student's behavior (“That's enough!” “Wake up, and sit up straight.” “Eyes on me, please!”) has nothing but those commands to rely on; the “corrected” student is likely to modify the behavior only temporarily, if at all.
I've experienced this with students whom I don't know. For example, my school has a rule of no hats in the hallway, and most students adhere to it. Occasionally, while standing outside my classroom between classes, I'll spot a hat wearer and have to say, “Sir, lose the hat.” Some of these students take off their hats with an “Oops, my bad,” and others just take off their hats without comment. They might put those hats on again after turning the corner—I just don't know. But there are a few students who look back defiantly and ignore my command. This forces me into a decision: Ignore the child's defiance or uphold the rule? Nine times out of 10, I uphold the rule and follow the student until he removes his hat. It's difficult to turn my back on a child who is so obviously looking for attention.
With our own students, whom we see every day, we can focus on helping them change their behavior for themselves and reinforce our guidance with words and action. I had the opportunity to do this with Monty. He was a gem of a student who worked diligently and cooperated well in my class. I saw him in the hall one day during my planning period. He didn't have a pass. I knew what that meant: He was on his way to lockout.
I stopped him and asked, “Hey, Monty, how are you doing?”
“Not so great,” he replied. He knew that I knew where he was headed.
“What happened?”
“That Ms. Smith, she just threw me out of class for talking,” he said.
“Sounds like she runs a pretty tight ship.”
“Yeah. I was just telling this girl what the assignment was. I wasn't being loud.”
“Hmm . . . I can see where this could be frustrating. What can you do to make sure you aren't put in this situation again?”
“Just tell the girl to ask the teacher what the assignment is?”
“Sounds good, but Ms. Smith might still get mad because you are still talking.”
“Yeah. I don't know, then.”
“What about body language?”
“You mean like pointing?”
“Yes.”
“I guess I could just point to the teacher or point to the page number in my book to show her where we are.”
“Sounds like you've come up with a good solution, Monty. I'll see you tomorrow in class.”
It took Monty a few tries to perfect his idea, but he soon learned how to get along in Ms. Smith's class. Yes, he still thought she was being unreasonable, but he came to see that it was in his best interest to cooperate. The other options were to fail, become a discipline problem, or be switched into another class where he might meet another teacher just like Ms. Smith. Realizing when to go along to get along and knowing how to do this are real-world skills that Monty will be using for the rest of his life: not only in school but also at home, at work, and at social gatherings.

In-School Suspension Work is love made visible. —Kahlil Gibran

When one of my students is in in-school suspension (ISS), I hand-deliver the assignment and necessary materials to the student myself. I enter the ISS room, say good morning, and explain the assignment. I do not gripe at the student for getting into trouble. I prompt the student for questions, mention that I look forward to seeing him or her back in class, and then say goodbye.
A personal appearance in ISS sends many messages. It tells my students that I care enough to walk all the way down to the ISS room instead of simply putting the assignment in the much-closer monitor's box. It also tells them that I do not want them to fall behind, and that I understand that they somehow got into trouble but it does not matter to me. I just want them back in class.
I have been surprised to see that many students who usually do nothing in the classroom will do beautiful work in ISS. I do not know if it's because the assignment was handwritten and delivered just for them, or if they are simply doing good work to kill time. Whatever the reason, I will take it.

Finding Solutions and Making Mistakes

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life. —Anne Lamott
Teaching many kids over the years is no guarantee that a teacher will know the perfect way to work with any particular kid. I believe that categorizing students into types—the good kids, the troublemakers, the shy ones, and so on—is inherently dangerous: a box that restricts the kinds of approaches teachers take. Of course, categorizing a student is not the same as looking for a behavioral pattern that can help clarify the student's circumstances. Putting a student in a category predetermines the response you will give him. If you categorize him as a troublemaker, you are less likely to reason with him individually and more likely to send him to the office. However, looking for behavioral patterns is a way to connect individual students to students you've taught before, and you can use past responses as a starting point. If what worked before is not successful, you're free to modify the approach. The clarity you've gained on the current student's circumstances puts you one step closer to an individual solution that will work.
It's OK to make a mistake, because you will. In fact, I've found that students really appreciate it when a teacher admits to making a mistake. We impress them more when we say, “I don't know the answer to this problem,” or “I messed up,” than when we fake infallibility. I had to own up to a mistake the day my students were finishing up a project on Romeo and Juliet. We had spent many days on this project, and nearing the end, all of us were eager to finish it. On the day before the projects were due, I told the students to get out their project materials while I took attendance and did a book check. Several voices called out with comments like, “Oh, I left my stuff at home,” and “Can I have another assignment sheet?”
I ignored these comments and continued taking attendance. Then I got everyone's attention and asked, “Who needs another assignment sheet?” I passed them out along with the necessary books. “Are there any questions about the project? It is due tomorrow when you walk into class.”
Mark raised his hand and said, “I need to go to my locker.”
“I'm sorry, Mark,” I responded. “You'll have to work on another aspect of your project. I don't allow students to go to their lockers during class.”
Other kids chimed in with similar difficulties. I was becoming annoyed. Then Kelvin said, “Man, I've got to go to my locker.”

Tipping Point: From Feckless Reform to Substantive Instructional Improvement

Even though we already know the best way to improve instruction, we persist in pursuing strategies that have repeatedly failed. Mr. Schmoker urges us to break free of our addiction to strategic planning and large-scale reform.
By Mike Schmoker
THERE ARE simple, proven, affordable structures that exist right now and could have a dramatic, widespread impact on schools and achievement -- in virtually any school. An astonishing level of agreement has emerged on this point. Indeed, Milbrey McLaughlin speaks for a legion of esteemed educators and researchers when she asserts that "the most promising strategy for sustained, substantive school improvement is building the capacity of school personnel to function as a professional learning community" (emphasis added).1
But here's the problem. Such "learning communities" -- rightly defined -- are still extremely rare. For years, they have been supplanted and obscured by hugely popular, but patently discredited, reform and improvement models. The record is clear that these failed, unnecessarily complex reforms have had only the most negligible impact on what should be our core concern: the quality of teaching students receive.
As Jim Collins has famously found, any organization attempting improvement must first "confront the brutal facts" about itself.2 In our case, the facts point to a fairly stark choice and an unprecedented opportunity for better schools. The place to begin is with a hard look at the evidence against conventional reform and improvement efforts -- and at the evidence that argues for the right kind of "learning communities."

The Rise (and Fall) of 'Strategic Planning'

In the years since "reform" first became a byword in education circles, "strategic planning" has had a pervasive influence on reform and improvement efforts. It was given a big boost by people like William Cook (some called it the "Bill Cook model"), an organizational theorist who eventually wrote a popular book on how to adapt strategic planning for schools.3 The terms and trappings of this process reach into virtually every school and district.
In the late 1980s, I began to work closely with schools to develop such strategic (sometimes "comprehensive" or "systemic") plans. Led by sharp, well-intentioned people, the work required days of dialogue involving large swaths of school and community stakeholders. There were procedures for conducting wide-ranging "needs assessments"; for writing lofty-sounding (but ultimately irrelevant) "mission," "vision," and "belief statements"; for "reaching consensus," setting "goals," and listing "action steps" and "objectives." We then designated "persons responsible," "resources needed," "evaluation," and "timelines" for the abundance of goals, action steps, and objectives we had set. All of this was then transferred into fat, published plans, replete with columns and boxes for each term and category.
Some of us began to notice that, once under way, the planning juggernaut was hard to control. Invariably, we wound up committing to far more activities and initiatives than anyone could possibly monitor, much less successfully implement. In selecting the professional or staff development activities that filled our plans, novelty and surface appeal overwhelmingly trumped evidence of school success -- or any direct connection to improvements in teaching.
Clarity and coherence suffered. These processes were conducted with no clear definitions of key terms. We worked for years before we learned that the right definition of "goals" was central to success: to have any impact on instruction, they had to be simple, measurable statements linked to student assessments -- not commitments to offer workshops or implement programs.4 It also took us a long time to learn that coherence required that the number of goals be severely limited.5
We wound up setting an impossible number of "goals," even as the word was used almost interchangeably with "action steps" or "objectives." Even the "evaluation" or "results" columns were often indistinguishable from the "goals" and "action steps" -- as mere implementation or training was used as evidence of having met a goal.
Nonetheless, these annual plans, like the hundreds I've seen since then, were approved pro forma. There was real fear of criticizing their content and so alienating any of the numerous constituents who had spent their valuable time producing them.
Instructional quality -- and levels of achievement -- were typically unaffected by any of these processes.
Hidden assumptions. Looking back, it is clearer to me now that these plans -- for all their seemingly tight, logical connections between mission, belief, goals, actions, responsibilities, and evaluation -- were like beautiful but badly leaking boats. The thick, elegant documents we were so proud of were fraught with hidden but crippling assumptions about:

the effectiveness of planning itself,
the value of the workshops and staff development that populated our plans, and
our ability to meaningfully monitor this huge number of initiatives.

We assumed that these largely indirect and unproven annual planning procedures were superior to the more straightforward but protean processes I'll examine below: the dumb (if unsexy) certainties of having teams of teachers implement, assess, and adjust instruction in short-term cycles of improvement -- not annually, but continuously.
The fall. Benjamin Bloom once exhorted educators "to be much clearer about what we do and do not know so that we don't continually confuse the two."6 We do know, now, about the traps inherent in strategic planning and its close cousins: comprehensive, systemic, whole-school reform and related accreditation schemes. However, Michael Fullan concludes, "we still do not know how to achieve comprehensive reform on a wide scale."7
Years ago, James Kouzes and Barry Posner found that "strategic planning doesn't work."8 Henry Mintzberg, in his in-depth study, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, came to the same conclusion; meta-analytic studies roundly confirmed the failure of this approach.9 And former Harvard Business School professor Gary Hamel recently told an audience that "you might as well dance naked round a campfire as go to one more semi-sacramental planning meeting."10 Brutal facts, indeed.
Why does strategic planning fail? Kouzes and Posner explain it simply: rather than promote smart, short-term cycles of action, assessment, and adjustment, strategic planning "separates thought from action."11 Cook himself concedes that "strategic planning is in fact typically undertaken without the benefit of either thinking or action."12
First, strategic planning promotes an often thoughtless, hasty commitment to a dizzying abundance of (so-called) goals, initiatives, and projects. This may explain the speculation that less than 10% of what gets planned actually gets implemented.13 The initiatives themselves are not thoughtfully vetted on the basis of their direct or proven impact on outcomes but are more often adopted for personal or political reasons.14 As Douglas Reeves observes, "Lots of group buy-in" can hide the fact that "some of the strategies are just plain bad."15
Worse still, the activities in this exhaustive schedule of brand-name initiatives, workshops, and "action steps" are often only "loosely coupled" to the core process of teaching and its improvement -- to thoughtfully and continuously examining, testing, and fine-tuning the details of practice on the basis of assessment results.16 Withal, strategic planning presumes that the most vital, high-leverage thinking is done primarily by "planners" before the school year begins, rather than by teaching practitioners throughout the school year.
This is a crippling confusion. In fact, the most productive thinking is continuous and simultaneous with action -- that is, with teaching -- as practitioners collaboratively implement, assess, and adjust instruction as it happens. The most productive combinations of thought and action occur in team-based, short-term experimental cycles. Even the implementation of truly "proven practice" remains highly dependent on emergent personal, social, and practical factors.17 Actual practice must adjust and respond to ground-level complexities that can't be precisely anticipated at the beginning of the year; it must adapt to the results of specific strategies that cannot be conceived in advance.18 That is, what do we do when our (presumably terrific) lesson or strategy doesn't work with most students? What went wrong? How can we adjust the presentation, sequence, or use of time and materials to ensure greater student success? The answers to these questions are not found in strategic plans.
This confusion between annual planning and the ongoing, messy work of improving teaching explains the failure of "reform" to raise levels of achievement. How could it? Historically, reform has had only the most negligible impact on "the central work of the school: instruction."19 To remedy this situation, we must replace complex, long-term plans with simpler plans that focus on actual teaching lessons and units created in true "learning communities" that promote team-based, short-term thought and action.
Short-term versus annual. A number of thinkers have weighed in on the importance of targeted, short-term cycles of improvement. The key is for teams of professionals to achieve and celebrate a continuous succession of small, quick victories in vital areas. Fullan cites John Kotter, who urges us to "generate short-term wins," and Gary Hamel, who exhorts us to "win small, win early, win often."20 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work speaks directly to the need for people to structure their efforts around clear goals and precise, short-term feedback.21
This is the stuff of commitment and collective "momentum." Kouzes and Posner write of the symbiosis between organizational "momentum and visible signs of success," while for Collins, the "magic of momentum" is a function of "simple plans" that produce a stream of "visible, tangible results."22
I've seen many examples of teams of teachers who, through short-term trial and error, have found more effective ways to teach certain math applications, reading comprehension skills, difficult physics concepts, or elements of persuasive writing. The cumulative effect of such small, ongoing "wins" is the surest route to annual achievement gains.23
The record is clear that this is how core processes -- in education or industry -- are improved. It is all about short-term team wins, followed by fairly systematic recognition and celebration of each tangible breakthrough (another well-kept secret). Such recognition is still rare in schools, especially at the team level, where it stands to have the most impact.24
This model represents a seismic shift -- from annual to short-term. Instead of trying to "reform" a school or system, we should be creating the conditions for teams of teachers to continuously achieve (and receive recognition for) short-term wins in specific instructional areas (e.g., where assessment data indicate that students are struggling). Our plans, our "systemic reform," should focus primarily on establishing and sustaining the structure for just such norms of continuous improvement.
But let's be honest. This emphasis on continuous, collective, short-term experimentation, judgment, and adjustment is seldom found in strategic plans, which tend instead to constrain the very flexibility and creativity -- the "collective autonomy" -- that is the heart of such work. This constraint even bucks strong, perhaps irreversible, cultural and workplace trends. Without meaning to, elaborate and explicit planning can quash essential (albeit circumscribed) creativity. In The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Mintzberg points out that planning means being locked into set categories that generally discourage real creativity . . . employees have less freedom in the exercise of their judgment. The restriction on initiative tends to snuff out the creative spark that is so essential in successful enterprise.25
No surprise, then, that planning often has a bad effect on morale. Creativity and enthusiasm -- the fuel for improvement -- only "diminish under the weight of big, thick, leather binders."26 Hence Cook's concession that "the vast majority of strategic planning is worse than futile -- it is destructive."27

Close Cousins: Comprehensive, Systemic, and Whole-School Reform

Despite the growing consensus about the ineffectiveness of strategic planning, its influence is pervasive, having been integrated into the larger family of large-scale "systemic" models of reform: from home-grown plans and programs to popular accreditation schemes and name-brand "whole-school" or "comprehensive" reform designs.
All share certain core features with strategic planning. They are characteristically elaborate, prescriptive, and "systemic" (a good thing, rightly understood). Though many programs contain viable elements and practices, they tend, on the whole, to slight or supplant the collaborative structures necessary for instructional improvement. Much of this difficulty can be explained by the tendency of systemic planning toward "overload."
"Overload" and its impact. For some years now, Michael Fullan has written that "comprehensive," "systemic," and "elaborate implementation plans" are not the solution to better schools. "Designed to help, but actually adding insult to injury," he writes, "complex implementation plans themselves become another source of burden and confusion."28 They promote the scandal of "overload and fragmentation." Nothing is so frustrating as trying to follow a plan that outstrips teachers' time and capacity to implement it. When there is too much to do, improvement becomes "disjointed and incoherent."29
Teachers bear the brunt of this overload. David Tyack and Larry Cuban concur that reforms "have added complexity, . . . brought incoherence," and "made new demands of time and effort on heavily burdened teachers."30 For Daniel Levine and Robert Liebert, "comprehensive or semi-comprehensive planning requirements often have the unintended effect of overloading teachers and administrators" -- who then use this as an excuse (arguably, a good one) for failing to achieve results.31
Sheer size promotes overload. My experience with improvement plans certainly confirms Reeves' observation that "all the plans I have examined have one characteristic in common: they are very, very large." For Reeves, effective leadership focuses not on the "labyrinthine process frequently associated with strategic planning" but on the recurrent collaborative, data-driven processes already alluded to here, in which teachers regularly examine student work and assessment results for the purpose of revising their instructional strategies.32
Ironically, the aim of genuinely "systemic" thinking is to promote clarity, coherence, and economy -- not their opposites. Fullan recognizes this but nonetheless advocates that we "turn systemic thinking on its head," as in its most common and perverse forms it has not added "one iota of clarity to the confusion faced by the majority of teachers."33 Most planning and accreditation templates are overly complex and rife with confusing, imprecise language that thwarts clarity and coherence. (I am holding a popular accreditation guide that requires administrators, among other things, to build their plans around data they must collect for 108 items in 24 categories.)
Another unseen contributor to overload and fragmentation is the assumption that good planning requires the involvement of a wide, representative array of constituents. To the contrary, Fullan found that "there is no evidence that widespread involvement at the initiation stage is either feasible or effective."34
Thomas Hatch, who has written in these pages about the unintended consequences of comprehensive reform, agrees. He is convinced that "fragmentation and overload" are often a function of planning that "requires the involvement of parents and other community members," whose input can easily dilute and complicate the improvement effort. The resulting "system overload" may be the "biggest threat" to genuine improvement. I've seen the upshot of this at close range: principals who must spend precious time assembling and then responding to the needs of committees and "governance structures" -- even "when we can't teach our kids to read."35
These are the "brutal facts" about the inherent pitfalls of strategic, systemic, and comprehensive plans. An increasingly popular form of such plans is the "whole-school" variety, and it has grown despite the evidence that argues against its effectiveness.
Whole-school reform: insufficient evidence. The case for external, expensive whole-school reforms deserves a hard, unblinking look. The record for even those few programs deemed "most effective" has been both modest and uneven -- and dogged by controversy.36 Even advocates for these programs have been more sanguine about their potential than about their actual success.37
A RAND study, commissioned by some of the most prominent whole-school programs, found disappointing results, despite "a decade of whole-school reform."38 As in Hatch's study, participating school districts discovered that "planned educational change" is "much more complex" than they initially anticipated. The authors conclude, somewhat ominously, that, "by and large, schools are not fertile ground" for such programs.39
Yet another study of systemic and whole-school reforms in three school districts concluded similarly that program requirements exceeded the capacity of schools and districts to implement them successfully.40 This was a major reason that, in one large urban district, a panoply of "whole-school reforms" was "wholly eliminated."41
How hard-headed have we been here? Journalist Anne Lewis has wondered if we'd have been better off "if some expertise in judging the evidence of a program's success had been part of the legislative debate" that led to the generous funding and premature aura of legitimacy bestowed on these programs.42
Can we revise reform? Maybe. To be sure, enduring improvements on a broad scale will require structure -- but of a kind that is both simpler and less prescriptive. That is, we'll need structures that are less apt to prohibit collective, creative thought and adjustment by practitioners, for the engagement of practitioners in continuous research and experimentation is the hallmark of a profession.43 The idea of "research-based practices" is not irrelevant here, and there are some excellent published sources that describe such practices.44 We should certainly avail ourselves of these.
But, as Richard Allington has said, even the best educational research is "a slippery beast." Indeed, it must be interpreted and implemented in a context where teachers can collectively invent, adapt, and refine lessons and units in which "best practices" are embedded.45
Unfortunately, whole-school reform, warns Fullan, has worked the other way: it has suppressed teachers' confidence in their ability to invent or adapt effective lessons and strategies. This is especially true when it comes to teaching for deep understanding. Only "well-executed learning communities" can achieve this goal, while cultivating the ever-important "ownership" so essential to improvement. Effective teachers must see themselves not as passive, dependent implementers of someone else's script but as active members of research teams -- as "scientists who continuously develop their intellectual and investigative effectiveness." For these reasons, Fullan recommends that schools "not adopt external programs" because
whole-school reform models make the mistake of thinking that a comprehensive external reform model will solve the coherence problem. . . . It doesn't work because it feeds into the dependency of teachers and principals.46
Perhaps less prescriptive, less "overloaded" versions of these external programs could be piloted and refined to good effect before they are mass-marketed. But at this point, we have yet to reckon with the evidence that we don't know how to achieve comprehensive reform on a wide scale.
This same failure to confront the evidence can be seen in the area of staff development, perhaps the most prominent but chronically confused area of school improvement plans.
Staff development: toward an evidence-based culture. Here, indeed, the brutal facts wait to be confronted. Among education's most curious contradictions is the persistence of feckless staff development practices that nearly everyone recognizes but few step up to change.
In their study of systemic reform, Tom Corcoran, Susan Fuhrman, and Carol Belcher found that all three districts they studied featured highly elaborate systems for providing professional development. Each district offered a large but unfocused menu of workshops, courses, and "awareness sessions." Sadly, but oh so typically, the failure of this expensive and elaborate apparatus was all but guaranteed by the absence of "follow-up support" or of any meaningful attempts to monitor implementation.47 Ironically, the researchers found that the very staff members who led professional development -- and from whom one might expect a more empirical mindset -- "were not members of an evidence-based culture themselves." Instead of evidence, "whims, fads, opportunism, and ideology" prevailed. "Empirical research had little to do with the professional development offerings in all three districts." Rather than promote coherence and alignment between staff development and academic goals, training and workshops in fact "tended to focus on the hot topics of the day."
The explanation for this points directly to the terribly common practice of evaluating staff development on the basis of "high participation rates and high levels of teacher satisfaction . . . judged by whether [the workshops] could attract and please teachers." This practice was sanctioned at the highest levels as "district leaders seldom asked if participation . . . led to changes in practice or improvement in student performance."48
The critique of standard-issue staff development is quite damning, and it is not new. Dennis Sparks, the president of the National Staff Development Council, has been calling for serious changes for years, decrying the fact that "only a small portion of what is known about quality staff development is regularly used in schools." The key is to replace a belief in "'experts' who 'deliver' knowledge of good teaching in workshops" with communities of teachers who learn through "ongoing collaboration and practice."49
For just as long, Bruce Joyce and his colleagues have been telling us that typical staff development "probably will not generate the amount of change necessary to affect student achievement." Instead, they advocate -- along with Sparks, Fullan, and others -- the creation of the kind of "communities of teacher researchers" who engage in focused, recurring cycles of instruction, assessment, and adjustment of instruction.50
For staff development expert Thomas Guskey, the promise of professional development has gone "largely unfulfilled." The solution is staff development built around "collaborative exchange," in which "teachers work together, reflect on their practice, exchange ideas, and share strategies."51
Finally, Richard Stiggins writes that "assessment literacy," so integral to the ongoing improvement of instruction, can be acquired only in "learning teams." "Workshops," he concludes, "will not work." They "do not permit the application of and experimentation with new assessment ideas in real classrooms, and sharing that experience with other colleagues in a team effort."52

The Case for Learning Communities

We should celebrate such findings. They can turn our attention to what truly works and can liberate us from the unfocused excesses of what critic Peter Temes regards as "wasted effort on a stunning scale by the tens of thousands of people, professionals and parents, dedicating their time, their money, and their spirits to large-scale reform."53
We have invested heavily in such "reform" at the expense of the best-known means by which we might achieve truly historic, wide-scale improvements in teaching and learning -- that is, the structured, empirical work of "learning communities." Let's look more carefully now at the case for this powerful alternative to conventional improvement efforts.
A remarkable concurrence. There is broad, even remarkable, concurrence among members of the research community on the effects of carefully structured learning teams on the improvement of instruction. Add to this that such structures are probably the most practical, affordable, and professionally dignifying route to better instruction in our schools.
Consider the gravity with which Fullan refers to Judith Warren Little's research: "No words," he writes, "could sum up this discussion of school-level factors [that affect achievement] more accurately than those of Judith Little." He then quotes her as saying, "school improvement is most surely and thoroughly achieved when teachers engage in frequent, continuous and increasingly concrete and precise talk about teaching practice . . . adequate to the complexities of teaching, capable of distinguishing one practice and its virtue from another." In this simple but somewhat radical scheme, so different from the elaborate machinations of reform and improvement planning, "teachers and administrators teach each other the practice of teaching" (emphasis in original).54
Fullan continues to quote Little as she describes truly productive teams as those in which teachers rigorously "plan, design, research, evaluate, and prepare teaching materials together." Such simple effort -- teachers teaching one another the practice of teaching -- leads to what has to be one of the most salient lists of benefits in educational literature:

higher-quality solutions to instructional problems,
increased confidence among faculty,
increased ability to support one another's strengths and to accommodate weaknesses,
more systematic assistance to beginning teachers, and
the ability to examine an expanded pool of ideas, methods, and materials.

In combination, these elements can't help but produce "remarkable gains in achievement."55
Carl Glickman no less confidently asks the question, "How do teaching and learning improve?" For him,
the answer is no mystery. It's as simple as this: I cannot improve my craft in isolation from others. To improve, I must have formats, structures, and plans for reflecting on, changing, and assessing my practice [which] . . . must be continually tested and upgraded with my colleagues.56
Linda Darling-Hammond is struck by how systemic reform promotes overload and incoherence, even as it requires professional teachers to "unthinkingly" implement changes in practice. After all, she argues, there is "no packaged program" that ensures success. But there are, she continues, common "structural features" that promote success in schools. Successful schools allow more professional autonomy, but they also provide accountability through "explicit goals for student learning." The core structure essential to reaching these goals is built around "teaching teams, time for teachers to collaborate and learn together . . . ongoing inquiry as a basis for continual improvement." Best of all, these structures can be established by any leader, and not just the rare individual with "charisma."57
There simply isn't space here to provide the names of all the esteemed educators and organizational experts who advocate explicitly for such collaborative structures and their singular effectiveness. Along with those I've already mentioned, though, a most incomplete list must also include Roland Barth, Louis Castenell, Jim Collins, Lisa Delpit, Karen Eastwood, Richard Elmore, Asa Hilliard, Stephanie Hirsh, Jacqueline Irvine Jordan, Anne Lieberman, Dan Lortie, Robert Marzano, Jay McTighe, Fred Newmann, Allan Odden, Susan Rosenholtz, Seymour Sarason, Tom Peters, Peter Senge, Gary Wehlage, James Stigler, and Grant Wiggins. There are, of course, an avalanche of others.
Thousands of schools and even entire districts can attest to the power of these structures for promoting first incremental and then cumulatively dramatic and enduring improvements in teaching and learning. A short list would include Central Park East in New York's Harlem; Bennet-Kew Elementary School in Inglewood, California; Warm Springs Elementary School on the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon; Crossroads Elementary School in Norfolk, Virginia; Mather Elementary School in Boston; Kerman Unified Schools in rural, high-poverty California; Oak Park Schools near Detroit; Boones Mill School in rural Virginia; and many more. These schools and districts have made substantive, enduring gains in achievement, largely on the strength of well-structured, goal-oriented learning teams and communities.
For former superintendent Richard DuFour, whose already high-achieving high school district near Chicago made record gains over an extended period, such goal-oriented "collaborative teams" were "the primary engine of our school improvement efforts."58 In the nearby but less advantaged Chicago Public Schools, those with "strong professional learning communities were four times more likely to be improving academically than schools with weaker professional communities."59 We can no longer afford to be innocent of the fact that "collaboration" improves performance.
Tipping point. It is stunning that for all this evidence and consensus of expert opinion, such collaboration -- our most effective tool for improving instruction -- remains exceedingly, dismayingly rare. It continues to be crowded out by our persistent but unexamined addiction to complex, over-hyped planning and improvement models. Though such terms as "learning communities" and "lesson study" are heard more than ever, we hardly acknowledge their central importance in actual practice: it is a rare school that has established regular times for teachers to create, test, and refine their lessons and strategies together.
For this to happen, we have to reach a "tipping point," the moment when -- sometimes quite quickly -- people's actions and attitudes change dramatically, and the change spreads like a contagion. Such change typically happens through an energized word-of-mouth campaign.60 Such a tipping point -- from reform to true collaboration -- could represent the most productive shift in the history of educational practice.
And there are plenty of us to get the word out. We will know we have succeeded when the absence of a "strong professional learning community" in a school is an embarrassment and when educators everywhere have great stories to tell about specific, concrete successes that led, cumulatively, to truly systemic success.
1 Richard DuFour and Robert Eaker, Professional Learning Communities at Work (Bloomington, Ind.: National Education Service, 1998), p. xi.
2 Jim Collins, Good to Great ( New York: HarperBusiness, 2001), p. 65.
3 William J. Cook, Strategic Planning for America's Schools (Arlington, Va.: American Association of School Administrators, 1990).
4 Judith Warren Little, "The Persistence of Privacy: Autonomy and Initiative in Teachers' Professional Relations," Teachers College Record, Summer 1990, pp. 509-36; Susan J. Rosenholtz, Teachers' Workplace: The Social Organization of Schools (New York: Teachers College Press, 1991); Carl D. Glickman, Renewing America's Schools (Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1993), pp. 28-29; and Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization (New York: HarperBusiness, 2003).
5 Michael G. Fullan, with Suzanne Stiegelbauer, The New Meaning of Educational Change, 2nd ed. (New York: Teachers College Press, 1991), p. 71; George H. Labovitz, Yu Sang Chang, and Victor Rosansky, Making Quality Work (New York: HarperBusiness, 1993), p. 112; and Bruce Joyce, James Wolf, and Emily Calhoun, The Self-Renewing School (Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1993), p. 44.
6 Kathleen A. Fitzpatrick, Indicators of Schools of Quality, Volume I: Schoolwide Indicators of School Quality (Schaumburg, Ill.: National Study of School Evaluation, 1998) p. 4.
7 Michael G. Fullan, "Turning Systemic Thinking on Its Head," Phi Delta Kappan, February 1996, p. 421.
8 James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, The Leadership Challenge (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995), p. 244.
9 Henry Mintzberg, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (New York: Free Press, 1994).
10 Quoted in Douglas B. Reeves, The Daily Disciplines of Leadership ( San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002), p. 100.
11 Kouzes and Posner, p. 244.
12 Cook, p. 2.
13 Mintzberg, p. 67.
14 Tom Corcoran, Susan H. Fuhrman, and Carol L. Belcher, "The District Role in Instructional Improvement," Phi Delta Kappan, September 2001, pp. 78-84.
15 Reeves, p. 101.
16 Richard F. Elmore, Building a New Structure for School Leadership ( Washington, D.C.: Albert Shanker Institute, 2000), p. 6.
17 Michael G. Fullan, Leading in a Culture of Change ( San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001), p. 78; and Donald A. Schön, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (New York: Basic Books, 1983), pp. 165-66.
18 Kouzes and Posner, p. 244; and Mintzberg, op. cit.
19 David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 84.
20 Fullan, Leading in a Culture of Change, pp. 32-33.
21 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Follow the Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990), p. 49.
22 Kouzes and Posner, p. 247; and Collins, p. 177.
23 Mike Schmoker, The Results Fieldbook: Practical Strategies from Dramatically Improved Schools ( Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2001).
24 Dan C. Lortie, Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975); Bob Nelson, 1001 Ways to Reward Employees (New York: Workman, 1994); Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, First, Break All the Rules (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999); Joseph Blasé and Peggy C. Kirby, "The Power of Praise -- A Strategy for Effective Schools," NASSP Bulletin, December 1992, pp. 69-77; and Tom Peters, Thriving on Chaos (New York: Knopf, 1987).
25 Mintzberg, p. 181.
26 Ibid.
27 Cook, p. 3.
28 Fullan with Stiegelbauer, p. 97.
29 Fullan, "Turning Systemic Thinking on Its Head," p. 420.
30 Tyack and Cuban, p. 83.
31 Quoted in Fullan with Stiegelbauer, p. 96.
32 Reeves, pp. 104-5.
33 Fullan, "Turning Systemic Thinking on Its Head," p. 421.
34 Fullan with Stiegelbauer, p. 91.
35 Thomas Hatch, "It Takes Capacity to Build Capacity," Education Week, 14 February 2001, pp. 44, 47.
36 Richard L. Allington, What Really Matters for Struggling Readers ( New York: Longman, 2001), p. 10.
37 Olatokunbo S. Fashola and Robert E. Slavin, "Schoolwide Reform Models: What Works?," Phi Delta Kappan, January 1998, pp. 370-79.
38 Mark Berends, Susan Bodilly, and Sheila Nataraj Kirby, "Looking Back over a Decade of Whole-School Reform: The Experience of New American Schools," Phi Delta Kappan, October 2002, p. 170.
39 Ibid., p. 174.
40 Corcoran, Fuhrman, and Belcher, op. cit.
41 Deborah Viadero, "Whole-School Projects Show Mixed Results," Education Week, 11 July 2001, p. 19.
42 Anne C. Lewis, "The Importance of Evidence," Phi Delta Kappan, May 1998, p. 644.
43 Carl D. Glickman, Leadership for Learning: How to Help Teachers Succeed ( Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2002), p. 4; and Linda Darling-Hammond, The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Creating Schools That Work (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997), p. 297.
44 Allington, op. cit.; and Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, and Jane E. Pollock, Classroom Instruction That Works ( Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2001).
45 Allington, p. 9; Bruce Joyce and Beverly Showers, Student Achievement Through Staff Development ( Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2002); and James W. Stigler and James Hiebert, The Teaching Gap: Best Ideas from the World's Teachers for Improving Education in the Classroom (New York: Free Press, 1999).
46 Fullan is quoted in Dennis Sparks, "Change Agent," Journal of Staff Development, Winter 2003, pp. 55-58.
47 Corcoran, Fuhrman, and Belcher, pp. 82-83.
48 Ibid., p. 82.
49 Dennis Sparks, "The Real Barrier to Improved Professional Development," Results newsletter, April 2001, p. 2.
50 Joyce and Showers, p. 35.
51 Thomas R. Guskey, "What Makes Professional Development Effective?," Phi Delta Kappan, June 2003, p. 749.
52 Richard L. Stiggins, "Assessment, Student Confidence, and School Success," Phi Delta Kappan, November 1999, p. 198.
53 Peter Temes, "The End of School Reform," Education Week, 4 April 2001.
54 Little is quoted in Fullan and Stiegelbauer, p. 78.
55 Little, "The Persistence of Privacy," pp. 526-27.
56 Glickman, Leadership for Learning, p. 4.
57 Darling-Hammond, pp. 150-51.
58 Richard DuFour, "The Learning Principal," Educational Leadership, May 2002, p. 14.
59 Anne C. Lewis, "School Reform and Professional Development," Phi Delta Kappan, March 2002, p. 489.
60 Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference ( Boston: Little, Brown, 2002).
MIKE SCHMOKER is a writer and consultant living in Flagstaff, Ariz. He is the author of Results (ASCD, 1999) and The Results Fieldbook (ASCD, 2001). He can be reached at info@mikeschmoker.com.

That was it.
“Kelvin, you should've thought about that before you came to class!” I said in a nasty tone of voice.
“You don't have to yell at me,” he replied. “I just made a simple mistake.”
He was right. I needed to take a few breaths before I could talk to him about it. After quieting the class, I walked over to Kelvin, squeezed his shoulder, and said, “I'm sorry I yelled at you. I was getting really frustrated.”
That was all I said. Somehow that was enough, and Kelvin found some project-related work to do. This gave me the energy to go deal with Mark, who was still not working on anything. He was a master at finding ways to get out of class, but with my renewed energy, we figured out a short assignment he could complete before the bell.
Sure, I had to lose a little face when I apologized to Kelvin, but I gained a lot of respect from him at the same time. I showed him that I make grievous errors in judgment too and that I need forgiveness for making these errors. As teachers, we expect students to apologize all the time, yet we seldom model the behavior ourselves. That should change.

Questions for Reflection

1. What are your “buttons”?
2. What can you do to prevent your students from pushing your buttons?
3. What is your method for evaluating your school day, week, or semester?
4. What steps do you take to address poor student behavior?
5. What battles do you avoid? Why?
6. What do you do when you see students who are in trouble?
7. Think of a time someone sincerely apologized to you. How did that affect you?

On common ground
--what is being done vertically and horizontally
--what is being done systemically (5)
--does the PLC (8) exist on the site in a continuous process of individual and collective examination and improvement of practice?

How is the knowledge being shared?
Sustained—the hard work of the continual pushing for the desired outcome® a breakthrough is eventually reached. Embed collaboration (18)
How is the culture transforming (9) how are BVA touched and changed, especially from within! There should be new competencies and new commitments. Watch out for the system to try to regress. (11) “Fullan iterates (19) that capacity building is the daily habit of working together, and you can’t learn this from a workshop or course. You need to learn it by doing it and getting better at it on purpose” (p.69) Senge asks (p. 44) what evidence do we have that this initiative or this practice is helping us to become more effective in assisting students to achieve high levels? ® What are the results? (20)

(15) Ask ourselves what are the essential learning’s® benchmarks (18). How will they be assessed? What is our response when student’s experience difficulty? How do we deepen mastery?

(21) Assessment for learning provides feedback for students in trouble and informing teacher practice.

(24) Principals should consider themselves ad leaders of leaders, empowering sand supporting teacher leadership to improve teaching practice.

What is a PLC? (32) Ensure that students learn rather than just taught!
-what is it we want them to learn
-how will we know they have done so?
-how do we respond when difficulty arises—this answer separates learning communities from traditional schools!
(34) Students need more time and support through teacher-designed systems, no matter who their teacher is.
The response to difficulty is
- Timely
- based on intervention rather than remediation
- Directive
- Systemic progress reports and 3 and 6 weeks—intervene as required not by invitation (35)
Create a culture of collaboration—(36)
-access to common curriculum (39) that is intended, implemented and learned/attained
- Collaboration training is required.

Focus on the results/ data (39)—use it to change traditional practice, confront reality and revise previous assumptions (41)® BVA® focus on student learning!

Chapter 3 –putting it all together

standards should be changed to a set of rational relevant and focused expectations® no default adoption (48)
1. there should be endurance—recurring nature of skills students should display (50)
2. leverage (51) associated success of cross-curriculum stds
3. essential for the next level of instruction—(51)
there must be frequent common assessments—go for the physical rather than the autopsy (53)
there should be other explicit indicators of adult behavior (teaching practices, curriculum, leadership) on student achievement (46)

The Nintendo Effect (55)—feedback—that is specific, accurate, incremental, and timely
If we do interventions from the outside, what changes on the inside®BVA

(58) DA –Differentiated assessment allow students to show what they know in diff ways!

Constructive Accountability (60)—
· Tier 1—typical data
· Tier 2—relates to professional practice in teaching and leadership
· Tier 3—the school narrative—the qualitative data

Pillars of support for PLC = Standards-assessment-accountability (61)

Chapter 4—Stiggins- we asses for 2 reasons (65)
1. Gather evidence of achievement
2. Motivate learning. ® The driving force becomes competency and emotionally building confidence and optimism (73). Everything centers on getting better over time (77)

Of learning assessments	FOR learning assessments
Standardized tests—college admissions, PSAE, ISAT, Plan, Explore, unite tests, final exams, occur after instruction has occurred	-inform students about themselves—getting better over time
Measure mastery	Measure growth

--Assessment for learning (78)—where is the disconnect between what the child considers success and the established norm? Is there map valid? What is the difference in the maps? Have they been taught how to assess themselves effectively?
-- is the system in harmony with the struggling student?
--are the expectations clear?
--Are the assessments accurate-?
--are they returned in a timely and understandable manner?
--part of this is building an environment of trust that in the affective domain leads to risk-taking, expectation of positive results, striving toward success but not all at the same time.

Chapter 5—masters of motivation
--Effort based ability—the belief that all students can do rigorous academic work at high standards (86). In reality, we don’t give up on kids---turning our beliefs into appropriate practices with kids.
A belief that all students have the intellectual ability to meet rigorous demands but not all students have the belief in themselves (87). There are six structures: interactive teaching behaviors, classroom structures, classroom climates and relationship building, teaching of effective effort, school-wide systemic structures for building a culture of aspirations, effective effort, and responsibility, a focus on the future.
HOW—masters of Motivation-belief in kids ability and are willing to work toward students innate capacity in the form of a PLC® Whatever it Takes…students must b taught explicitly how to work harder and smarter!(89)
Three crucial messages—based on attribution theory focusing on effort and success not luck!
1. What we are doing here is important.
2. You can do it
3. I am not going to give up on you---even if you give up on yourself!

Grades are involved that at the unsuccessful level are ‘not yet.’ (94) Redos and retakes are allowed with the highest grade allowed.
Explicit teaching of Effective Effort (98)
· Time—students much put the time in and understand how much is required for quality work.
· Focus—work time is efficient and lacking distraction
· Resourcefulness—students are willing to seek assistance
· Strategies—students know the appropriate one’s for the task—we need training here!!! SQ3R, KWLA, SQWRW (, CRISS,
· Use of feedback—timely and consistent –authentic and real—more training
· Commitment—effort is grounded in will. Students must want to accomplish something to put forth effort and organize themselves to complete a tough learning task. The don’t have to like it but must commit to trying hard!
Training is SMART goals is essential—we have to define each term including focus.
Motivational Boot Camp (100-01)
Systemic thinking and implementation are necessary along with a pyramid of interventions especially for at-risk kids. Look at < www.jff.org/jff> or www.achieve.org/achieve.nsf/AmericanDiplomaProject > for students to get a picture of what their futures may look appear.
Fullan (104) believes we can act our way to new beliefs—
SAY IT—at every meeting ask what was accomplished (ABC reports)?
MODEL IT—teach a class about effective effort < www.efficacy.org >, be open to making mistakes by taking risks.
ORGANIZE FOR IT—teach brain-based learning, identify incoming at-risk students and schedule to appropriate teachers. Build the system/pyramid of interventions. Build not yet into schedules for students still in need of instruction—tutoring.
PROTECT IT-
MOREOVER, REWARD IT---change BVA®relationship at the heart of the child.

Chapter 6 Burners to Learners—Roland Barth

Response to learn of we will punish you—the students’ can’t wait to get out of the prison and demonstrate by the burning of the books. It turns students off to learning—
Dewey stated, “The most important attitude that can be formed is that of the desire to go on learning” (117).
The indicators for lifelong learning include:
1. The insatiable thirst is a love of learning for its own sake.
2. Voluntary engagement
3. The ability to ask one’s own questions and seek/find answers
4. The ability to marshal resources to find answers
5. Sustain engagement over time
6. The capacity to reflect and refine on oneself
7. The capacity to set high self-standards
8. The capacity to know and celebrate success.

How are we at monitoring theses standards? DaVinci remarked at age 86—Ancaro Imparo and Plutarch commented that education should be the lighting of a fire, not the filling of a bucket. We have to get to the heart of the child to seek internal change.

The principal should model for self-staff-students. “We must be that change we wish to see in the world” (Hindi, 120).
1. Attend the staff scheduled meetings.
2. Hire lifelong learners
3. Make it visible and attainable—what did the teachers learn over the summer (123).
4. Enlist the parents—
5. Set the stage for youngsters throughout the school year-(125)

i. Community members share their learning
ii. Assess students toward the goal

How do we frame questions (126)—look at what students do on their own time

i. Construct ways to detect, monitor and measure student self-learning.
5. We measure lifelong learning by what students do when no one is looking (126). It can be measured with logs from parents. Twain mentioned that he, “never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
The school’s remedy for students not learning has been more didactic (direct moral instruction), worksheets, texts and test. (127). “do the notes of the instructor pass to the notes of the students…without going through the minds of either (130)?”

North America can build a community of lifelong learners by shifting the ratio of didactic instruction from 85% to 15% and fill the reaming time with purposeful ‘something else’ (130).
Barth suggests we change from the punishment mode for not learning to learning as its own reward. This is a paradigm shift (132).